*200 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Origami Arktika is one of Norway’s best kept secrets. They serve a mutated folk music, rooted in the county of Telemark, interspaced with drones, noise, electronica and undefinable elements. They mix the archaic with the modern. Paper folding with frozen fingers. 

OA moves along the axis of time by using Old Norwegian folk songs and folklore, combined with modern inspiration and technology. OA is a knotty time machine, hotwired by haystack-poles and pitchforks, glued together with cow dung, old snippets of song, unheard drones and tones. They flow over the internal wastelands and drill moth holes in time. The result is some kind of mystical folk music, brimming with smoldering desperation, a slow burning existential angst, from closed, incestuous valleys where the fear of unfamiliar genes have ruled for centuries. The music on this new album is dim, dark and melancholy. Some tracks bear witness to a sacral, droning organ.

The associations leap towards damp ecstasy in small chapels, deep in narrow valleys where meaningless rituals and prayers tempt weary souls with promises of a better after life. Folk beliefs, Pagan beliefs, Christian beliefs – the unintelligible has led a life in close proximity to the shallow waters of reason and perception permeating our times, breeding models of understanding for an unfamiliar and seemingly meaningless existence.

Behind vocalist Rune Flaten, there are seven most accomplished and original musicians who seem to make deceptively little music. But the sum of all the smaller or larger elements of the music enter into a higher unity and the result is a unique musical landscape. It can sometimes appear as a chaotic pile of pixels, but when shaken together they create an image of the Sea Serpent slowly emerging from the Seljord lake. OA has an organic sound, almost like the ecosystems in the mountainsides of Telemark. The untamed undergrowth is bountiful with details, sounds, tones – it all melts into a unity which will not be easily deciphered. 

Most of the compositions were improvised in situ, with lyrics that Rune Flaten has been collecting for some time. All birds and animals were recorded by Eystein Hopland. All animals performed in the lovely environment of Rako Rappini Baulies’ casale. No animals were harmed in the making of this music. Several were fed and entertained.