The Norwegian folk (hard-) rock band Gangar, one of my current favorites, has a new single out, to keep their worldwide fans happy while they’re touring Australia. “Brobakken” is an instrumental reinlender (what the Norwegians call a schottisch) after the fiddling of Georg Brobakken, which the band found in the National Library’s archives. And then of course they do their thing with it, which we hope Georg would approve! Thedens gets his old time fiddling chops on, but the real focus here is the baritone saxophone of Oskar Goedvriend Lindberget – sometimes doubling the fiddle and sometimes the bass line, then rolling out a long jazzy solo toward the end.
The track was recorded during sessions for their previous album Stubb, and the band released it to mark what they say is a forthcoming change in direction. “This is the first new song we release after the debut album “Stubb,” and this can be considered a rounding off of the “Tre Danser/Stubb phase” of our musical process,” they say in a press release. “We are already working on new music and aim to start the next album ‘sooner rather than later.’ ”
Brobakken: