Bel Canto - Dream-pop from the Ice

Tromsø, Norway, is a small town within the Arctic Circle with no more than 50,000 inhabitants. This is where Bel Canto was born, featuring Anneli Marian Drecker (voice, keyboards and piano), Nils Johansen (synthesizers, bass and acoustic guitar) and multi-instrumentalist Geir Jenssen. A band that sits somewhere between the metaphysical folk of Popol Vuh and the dream-pop of Cocteau Twins. But their original “synth-folk”, combining electronics, dreamy vocalizing and exotic keyboards, proved to be an unprecedented formula, capable of carrying ethnic flavors into synthetic arrangements. With a voice - that of the “siren” Anneli Drecker - among the most sophisticated and moving of recent years. “As a child I couldn't sing at all,” she recalls, “then, between the ages of 12 and 15, I went through that typical teenage voice change and started singing in a choir and taking singing lessons. I tried hard to learn in every way I could. It was when I started discovering jazz vocalists that I understood there was no need to use my voice like a trumpet, that you could sing in a different way. Only by listening to a lot of music was I able to find my own expression.”

Bel Canto's formation was the result of a “theft”. “We stole Anneli from another band and forced her to play with us,” recounts Nils Johansen. “Then we signed a deal with the Belgian label Crammed and everything happened very quickly.”

Their debut album, White Out Conditions (1987), is the perfect synthesis of their vast repertoire. It opens with two electronic nursery rhymes in the style of Brian Eno (the singles “Blank sheets” and “Dreaming girl”), continues with the enchanting notes of “Baltic ice-breaker” and the stately title track (somewhere between Enya and Celtic jigs), before arriving at a kind of Arabic techno in the driving progression of “Agassiz” and a sort of new age in the instrumental “Kloeberdanz”. With “Upland” the album veers toward evocative electronics reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, before closing with a classical, transcendent coda. “We try to express the inspiration that comes to us from our homeland, Norway,” explains Johansen. “We draw on the imagination typical of this region, of the Arctic Circle. Finding melodies is always a game, a challenge. But we also strive to go beyond our own experiences to search for something always new. It's an attempt to bring order to the chaos of nature, to capture melodies that are already in the air. We behave more like explorers than musicians.”

And so the follow-up, Birds Of Passage (1989), was born, recorded with a nine-piece lineup including cello, violin, trumpet and horn. It's yet another demonstration of the band's versatility, ranging from the gothic ballad “Suffering” to the nursery-rhyme title track, from the world-music of “Glassmaker” to the chamber madrigal of “Oystger”. There's also room for homages to medieval balladry in the style of Dead Can Dance (“Time without end”) and to Kate Bush-style melodrama (“Shoulder to the wheel”). Indeed, the great English vocalist proves to be one of the models for Anneli Drecker's singing, always crystalline and elegant. Shortly after, keyboardist Geir Jenssen left the group to focus on his many other projects, chief among them Biosphere. Bel Canto, meanwhile, carried on with “Shimmering warm and bright”, veering toward a more acoustic sound.

But it's above all with the follow-up, Magic Box (1996), that the Norwegian band established itself as one of the most interesting forces in end-of-century atmospheric electronica. Compared to its predecessors, the album pushes the rhythm, which becomes almost frenetic, echoing the techno feats of fellow Scandinavian Bjork. But it's above all Drecker's increasingly refined contralto that gives the songs their soul. The overture, built on the notes of a music box in the title track, draws listeners into the band's magical universe. The sound grows ever more cross-pollinated and compelling - as in the exotic blues of “In Zenith”, the whirling ethno-funk of “Freelunch in the jungle”, the Caribbean dance of “Didn't you know it”, the Nick Cave-style noir ballad “Bombay” with flashes of Indian fanfare, the aching trills of “Paradise”, and the multi-ethnic litany of “Kiss of spring”, which blends African rhythms, psychedelia and Mediterranean touches. And Anneli's voice grows ever more astonishing: “They call me the nightingale,” she says, “and that's really how it is: I sing all day, I walk around chirping, especially when I've been drinking. But I never wanted to sing just because I have a pleasant voice. My goal is to tear down borders.” So says Anneli the Viking: “I see the world as a borderless entity, but there's nothing premeditated about it, it's something that comes from the unconscious. We're descendants of the Vikings, and it's in our nature to explore the world as they did. The only difference is that we travel with our soul and our mind, using imagination as a map, through sounds and technology.”

Within Bel Canto's music, the ice of the Arctic Circle blends ideally with the lush forests of India, the equatorial swamps and Arabian deserts, the Siberian steppes and the African savannah. It's a "pan-ethnic" music with a universal scope. "Ethnic folk pop", Anneli calls it. "Arctic music", is how Nils Johansen defines it. A music that spreads across the world, in short, without giving up its Arctic roots. "Our roots are in Norway," explains Anneli. "It's a country with few people and vast spaces: fresh air, mountains and clear waters. It's a very spectral land, with trees casting blurred shadows. There's the Northern Lights and the midnight sun. And you can find all this even living in a big city like Oslo". But the injustices of the music industry have kept Bel Canto from truly breaking through outside Scandinavia. "We're sorry to be seen as just another Norwegian band that never makes it beyond its borders, because I'm sure that's not the case," says the singer. "Once, in Paris, while I was looking under the letter B for a David Bowie record, I stumbled upon one of our albums. I couldn't believe it: 'Is it really possible that's us, the Norwegians?' I asked myself.

Anneli Drecker also writes the lyrics, moving between English, French, Spanish and German. "The lyrics depend on the kind of coloring the music has," she explains. "If the colors are warm, for instance, the lyrics will be bright, almost transparent. I try hard to find a dialogue between the mood of the music and the lyrics: they have to be in sync, basically. There are things that can be expressed better in one language than another. Every language has its own musicality. I sing in different languages precisely to vary the personality of the songs".

In 1998, Rush carries on in the same vein, without however reaching the heights of the past, much like Dorothy's Victory (2002), which indulges in rarefied lounge-ambient atmospheres that are as alluring as they are, in the long run, cloying.

In the meantime Anneli Drecker became a mother and had the honor of being invited to take part in a tribute album to the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, already hailed as a "prophet" by Patti Smith. On that occasion the Norwegian singer performed some verses and composed the melodies. In collaboration with a rather unusual guest: French actor Gerard Depardieu.

Sealing her individual artistic path came the album Tundra (2000), bolstered by the two singles "Woebegone" and "All I Know".

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google