KAROLINE WALLACE – STIKLINGER Øra Fonogram (2021)
(Karoline Wallace – vocals, compositions; Erik Kimestad Pedersen – trumpet; Jonas Engel – alto saxophone and clarinet; Thibault Gomez – prepared piano; Ida Nørby – cello; Petter Asbjørnsen – double bass; Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek – drums; Kristian Tangvik – cassettes)
Oslo based Karoline Wallace is an architect of aural chaos. Sweet yet savvy. Educated but with an ear to the ground. Stiklinger is a collection of cuttings: pieces of sound that can grow their own roots. Modeled after her grandmother’s garden where every plant has been gathered from a neighbor, a relative, a vacation; each cutting contains a memory. Likewise these songs arise from simple sources to become entangled vines, lush shrubery and trees bearing apples: Grandfather’s “Disney” laugh, a nine digit phone number set to a tetrachord scale, conversation while picking berries, variations on a melody from a wind-up music box. Karoline Wallace leads these talented musicans with her deceptive vocal range that non-chalantly mixes Scandinavian folk songs with European opera, Tuvan throat singing with primal screams, all while absent mindedly humming, riding her bicycle down a path in the forest.
Tracklist:
- Rosehus 5:07
- Tri loopår 6:23
- Plis Rosalin 9:20
- Om du e 1.60 høy? 4:39
- Ett er nodigt 7:39
- Nei, Karoline, nå kommer sola 3:54
Kartoline Wallace and Ensemble for Stiklinger
Poetic Review by Casey Bush
Look this mirror straight in the face. House of many mansions. Room full of hallways. Door that is a window. Thunder shudders in the hedgerow. Connect these dots with those dashes. Fermented deities stagger across the grounds. Our universe began as a dark stain on a white bedspread. Tree roots bear subterranian fruit. A lawn sprouts in the rose bed. Who determines the point from which light emanates? Fermi bubbles inside a gamma ray nest. Tilt-a-whirl vertigo. Smart as snakes. Canebreak where the reeds grow thick. Upsy-daisy water nymph. Duckweed in the pitiless backwater. Rotisserie rosary mingling with voices over morning coffee. Paradiddle pancakes made from rotting potatoes. Fly into the quiet of the sky. Authenticate this proximal reality. Discourse dissipates within the murmur. We maintain contact with each other in order to keep in touch with ourselves.
For more information, please visit artist’s website
Cover design by Benedikte Wallace and Magnus Skarphedinsson
