Geir Sundstøl’s recordings have always had a cinematic quality about them. His 2025 offering Sakte Film (Slow Motion Film) pushes that envelope even further, as explicitly stated in the title. The Norwegian musician and composer here stretches his already multicolored sonic pallette with additional stringed instruments, more use of electronics, and a string quartet on some of the tracks.
Sundstøl’s 2021 album St. Hanshaugen Steel was one that comforted me through the worst months of the pandemic. I was first drawn to his music via his contributions of pedal steel guitar on Trond Kallevag’s Hubro records, and there’s still plenty of that American country-western vibe here on Sakte Film. But Sundstøl has never confined himself to one instrument or vibe, but he seems to be trying to outdo himself this time, playing: National tri-cone, bulbul tarang, pedal steel, guitar-o-lin, marxophone, Logan string melody, Casio PT-30, Teisco guitar, harmonica, timpani, National duolian, Casio SK-1, Minimoog, Juno-6, Suiko ST-100, Omnichord, percussion, Optigan, mandolin, electric bass, tubular bells, vibraphone (with bow), Wurlitzer Sideman, clavinet, Shankar guitar, bass harmonica, six-string bass, and finally vocoder.
If you’re like me, you’ll have to look up what some of those instruments even are. I’ll note that the bulbul tarang is a complex keyed stringed instrument whose name means “the nightingale’s cascading voice,” and a marxophone is sort of like a hammer dulcimer played with keys that are rather like those on a kalimba or thumb piano.
I initially had a bit of a hard time getting into this album but it has grown on me. My favorite parts are still those prominently featuring either a resonator or pedal steel guitar, but there are several examples. “Beveg” (move) does just that, lopes along like a Tuareg desert blues, with Sundstøl laying down multiple layers of stringed instruments including pedal steel and at least one National, and the percussionist/drummers (Anders Engen and Erland Dahlen) really going to town. Best song title goes to “Maroder misjonær” (marauding missionary), which is sonically similar but with a slower, more ominous vibe.
A couple of the compositions were originally created for other media: the electronics-heavy “Broder” for a podcast, and the dreamy “Divan” written for, as Sundstøl says, “background music for a slow love scene in the [Norwegian] TV series ‘So Long, Marianne’ about Leonard Cohen.” The opening and closing tracks are real winners, too. “Mats,” built around a riff laid down by Norwegian bassist Mats Eilertsen, melds Western and Eastern modes and sounds; the brief, elegiac “Pysj” (posh) finds Sundstøl playing a bittersweet tune on resonator with just a touch of electronics for atmosphere, the perfect way to wrap up an album like this.
(Hubro, 2025)