Skadedyr - Musikk! (2018)

Skadedyr's new album 'Musikk!' summons up a mood of ecstatic abandon where the wailing guitar and keyboard drones, ululating voice and rattling percussion bring to mind the cosmic spirit of Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana, or the deep spiritual jazz of Pharoah Sanders at its most cathartic.

In Skadedyr, founder-members Anja Lauvdal, Heida Mobeck, Hans Hulbekmo and Lars Ove Fossheim take a leading role in determining the initial shape of group compositions. There is something of Norway in the prevalence of brass band instruments and the flippant mix and match between different musical registers, accordion and slide guitar, and clash of high and low cultures. But if we do regard Skadedyr as Norwegian, this is in any case less to do with consigning something so new and so excitingly boundary-breaking to an ancient regime of outmoded nation-state cliches about how we categorize art, and more about identifying the music's positive virtues with its essential terroir.