Stian Carstensen is a Norwegian multi-instrumentalist, the cracked genius behind the group Farmer’s Market, which combines Scandinavian folk, Balkan dance music and wild post-bop jazz into a heady and infectious brew. On Backwards Into the Backwoods, his latest project freed from the constraints of the democratic Farmer’s Market, he explores similar territory and adds some Americana influences.
Carstensen grew up playing traditional accordion, under the tutelage of his father and grandfather. As a teen he switched to heavy metal guitar, before discovering classic jazz on the one hand, and delving into his other grandfather’s musical roots in Eastern Europe on the other. Now, this album was at least partly inspired by his recent travels in America, where he listened to and learned Appalachian styles of banjo playing. Here, then, is an idiosyncratic attempt to synthesize all these elements into a musical whole.
The first track, “Dmitri’s Polynesian vacation,” opens with a ripping downward cascade of notes on a prepared banjo, followed by ominous drumbeats, to which is slowly added a vaguely Eastern-sounding jazz melody on trumpet and keyboards that starts and stops, starts and stops; it gains in tempo and is joined by the frantic but gentle pumping of an accordion, which is soon left on its own to pursue the melody’s fragments — alternately dark and playful arpeggios, chords, runs and trills; and finally the rest of the band joins back in with jazzy piano and scatted vocals over a martial drumbeat that ends abruptly with tinkling piano chords.
The rest of the album carries on in this manner, mixing genres and oddly pairing instruments. In notes on his website, Carstensen explains that the sound of the Appalachian fingerpicked banjo reminded him of the spinet-piano used in classical music, so he has paired them up here on several tracks. Vocals, mostly non-verbal, are by Arve Henriksen, who has a piercing soprano full of trills and other mannnerisms. She sings one song in English, “See Fair Lis,” backed by acoustic guitar and resembling what hippies in the late 1960s might have thought old English folk songs should sound like, with lots of fa-la-las.
The short title track features prepared banjo that sounds like mallets tapping at small buckets, with lots of percolating percussion and scratchy violin. The enchanting “Zat was Zen … Zis is now” pairs flute and trumpet with spinet in a true east-west blend of melody and rhythm. “Buckwheat’s on bogweed” is a sort of ragtime bebop piece for piano, banjo and plucked cello. “What’s that horsehead doing on my pillow?” is a cinematic work, shades of Morricone meets the Godfather, with spinet playing the melody in front of a droning cello. The most engaging piece is “Vlad Tepes’ two-step (swing that bat…)” a zippy blend of Hungarian dance and swing jazz on cello (by label mate Ernst Reijseger) and accordion.
Smack dab in the middle of the album are five impressionistic solo accordion improvisations that are variously fluttery, languid and dark, light and airy, hymn like and melodic, and playfully dissonant.
The album is beautifully and meticulously recorded, and the CD package and artwork are up to Winter & Winter’s usually high standards.
For all that, Backwards plays more like a series of private jokes or musical exercises; missing is much of the manic energy and playful inventiveness of Farmer’s Market that invites the listener to join in the joke. Less zany, more cerebral, Backwards is also less accessible than Carstensen’s other work.
(Winter & Winter, 2004)
