Nils Okland Band

Nils Økland Band – Gjenskinn (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:44 minutes | 740 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hubro

“Glare” is an album The Band has been brewing for a long time, which has resulted in a cross-genre, holistic work with inspiration from many corners of the world. Nils is interested in music’s travels and dialogues across time and place, a music without borders of country and tradition.

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Nils Økland Band – Lysning (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 43:20 minutes | 468 MB | Genre: Folk, Jazz, Ambient
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hubro

With ‘Lysning’ – in English a clearing or forest glade – the violin and Hardanger fiddle virtuoso and composer Nils Økland has created a landmark recording that counts as his masterpiece thus far. It is also the synthesis and culmination of a long career working between different forms – folk music, art music from the baroque to free improvisation, jazz, rock, whatever – where Økland, who is now 56, has continued to pursue the same questing approach irrespective of the restrictive rules and boundaries used to separate different historical or generic styles. Listening to ‘Lysning’, everything suddenly becomes clear: Nils Økland plays Nils Økland music. Like a very select few contemporary masters – one thinks perhaps of Jordi Savall, Bjørk, Jan Garbarek – he has become his own genre.

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Nils Okland Band – Kjolvatn (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 49:23 minutes | 539 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Source: highresaudio.com | @ ECM Records GmbH
Recorded: June 2012, Hoff Church Østre Toten, Norway

Hard on the heels of his critically-lauded – and distortion-saturated – collaboration with rock players in ‘lumen drones’ comes the next fine album from norway’s hardanger fiddle master.

The idiosyncratic Norwegian musician Nils Økland (fiddle / violin / viola d’amore) has had a diverse career. On this sixth album ‘Kjølvatn’ he has put together a brand new band consisting of some of the leading musicians in Norway: Rolf-Erik Nystrom (saxophone), Sigbjørn Apeland (harmonium), Håkon Mørch Stene (percussion), Mats Eilertsen (double bass).

Økland has played as a solist with several major orchestras, written music for London Sinfonietta, film, ballet and theater and played on records with Christian Wallumrød, Arve Henriksen, Åsne Valland Nordli and Bjørnar Andresen, to mention a few. He has previously published solo album ‘Monograph’ and the duo ‘Lysøen’ along with Sigbjørn Apeland on ECM. Before this he released the albums ‘Bris’ and ‘Straum’ on Rune Grammofon and the self published debut ‘Blå Harding’. Nils plays in rock trio Lumen Drones (ECM), who released a critically acclaimed debut album last October and in the improvisation band 1982. Both as a performer and composer he has built bridges between folk, Jazz and improvised music.

Økland himself describes the music on ‘Kjølvatn’ this way: ‘In my work as a professional violinist in the last 30 years, I have moved between a wide wide range of genres from classical violin to Balkan folk, rock and punk, jazz and free improvisation, to Norwegian folk music. I’ve always composed my own material inspired by all these expressions; a hybrid between folk music poetry and punk energy. In early baroque music – another musical style I let myself be inspired by – it was common to have sketches as the basis for making music. In this band we work with methods that are inspired by this.’

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