White Birch - A Bright Norwegian Comet

Starting from the second half of the Nineties, the Scandinavian music universe transforms from chrysalis into butterfly. With an incredibly rich scene, ranging from jazz/drone experimentation (Supersilent and Deathprod) to the more easy-going electronics of Royksopp. In this creative and euphoric context, The White Birch are born in 1996. Ola Fløttum, Hans Christian Almendingen and Ulf Rogde, despite several lineup changes, shape a hybrid creature that, despite general indifference, would stand out as one of the most creative bands of the last fifteen years.

Adapting certain psychedelic shades from Pink Floyd's playbook with the more ethereal, melodic spirit of the 4AD stable, and blending post-rock attitude à-la Talk Talk with the most depressive strain of slowcore (it's no coincidence that the band's name matches the title of Codeine's masterpiece), The White Birch set off on a new path.

The impossible-to-find debut Self-Portrayal, released by Not On Label in a limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, is characterized by acidic sounds, poised between experimentation and psych-rock à-la Sonic Youth. After the EP "Left Hand", 1998 saw the release, via dBut (whose roster included names as notable as the already-mentioned Deathprod, Jaga Jazzist, Motorpsycho and Warlocks), of their debut full-length, titled People Now Human Beings.

Recorded between the end of summer and the first mild days of autumn, the album, mixed and produced by Helge Sten, consists of ten tracks for a total runtime of nearly fifty minutes. The musical groundwork and influences of the debut trace a songwriting approach that is perhaps still lacking and unripe, but which finds its real strength in being chameleonic and unpredictable. Between noise-rock surges and guitars that suddenly flare up ("Mechanical Swan"), the liquid keyboards of the opening "Eye" and the stride of "Satellite" - a successful blend of the first two tracks - make for a disorienting start.

The sinister industrial march of "JD, Meet The Andromeda Strain" changes the game once again: piano notes open the dance, driven on by vocals that start out despondent and turn furious, twisting around keyboards that raise the stakes, spurred by the drummer's cymbals.

The measured pace of "Blind" calms the troubled waters, caught between acoustic guitar and a nervous vocal. And while "Nick The Sailor", where drums fuse with clattering guitars, has us navigating by sight just above the water's surface through a light mist, on a sea that looks calm and suddenly ripples into a full-blown storm before finding quiet again, "Cabaret" is a dark funeral through and through. Between the dreamlike back-and-forth of "She Paints The Daytime Black", the gaseous state of "Violet Walk" and the funereal climax of "The Expanding Sea", the album closes having constantly played on the alternation between slowcore shades and noise-rock bursts of a distinctly "sonic youth" stripe. Ultimately, People Now Human Being marks out a band that fuses and reconciles different lineages, arriving at an admirable amalgam.

But it's with the release of Star Is Just A Sun that the Norwegian trio reaches its peak. Completely eliding rock elements in favour of a total opening-up to the dream-pop/slowcore tradition, White Birch craft an album of celestial perfection. Even the opening "Air", in its apparent simplicity built on keyboards that glide by without landing a blow, should have people crying miracle. The following "Breathe", amid old-fashioned keyboards and yellowed photographs, leafs through the pages of memory, sketching a melancholy little picture, between celestial visions and a slow-motion climax.

Slowness is the precious hallmark of this record, and even where a medieval-flavoured piano, over which an almost imperceptible drum part is grafted, hints at a slight acceleration ("Silly Malone"), a misty, subterranean tension runs through the essence of the splendid autumnal progress of "Love Is So Real". Arriving exactly at the halfway point of the record we come across a sublime song: placed as a watershed, "Beauty King" is a pop gem of rare intensity. The reins hold the keyboards in check for a minute, a decisive drum beat comes in with a tackle accompanied by a circling guitar, and Ola Fløttum's voice lets itself be carried by the melody's measured gait, relaxing further and further as the sonic climax advances, carrying us to the point of tears.

"Star" is a late-autumn afternoon, amid sleet, violins and keyboards evoking timeless settings, the measured advance of "Riot" warms the heart. But it's in their most radiant melancholy that White Birch capture the essence of their nature, unspooling notes in a static, almost imperceptible motion. The little pictures painted by the trio are blurred sketches, concealed behind a veil of frosted paper. "Donau Movies", in the vein of "Beauty King", is a bitter anthem, a slow piano progression that holds up the whole edifice. And when the finely chiselled reverbs fade lightly away until they vanish, the cymbals evaporate, the melody melts like snow in the sun ("Glow"), "Atlantis" sinks into the deepest sea, taking with it the sinking ship.

A purest gem, a lesson in slow-motion pop, one of the most refined, rarefied and ethereal albums of the whole decade: all this is Star Is Just A Sun.

Three years on from the 2002 gem, the Norwegian band's aura now reaches beyond the borders of the cold north. The reissue of their earlier work, including by the prestigious Rune Grammofon, confirms the belated discovery of one of the best-kept secrets of recent years. And the 2005 album, Come Up For Air, while still changing course, does nothing but confirm the impressions left by its predecessor.

Come Up For Air is the flip side of Star Is Just A Sun. Where the 2002 record left the listener drowning in a sweet, sweet sea, the new album offers the listener fresh oxygen. Across the three quarters of an hour spanned by its eleven tracks, the atmospheres become less rarefied, more tangible and earthbound. This impression, however, does not come at the expense of the poetic vein running through Ola Fløttum's band. It's worth stressing how Come Up For Air is a work with a decidedly wider instrumental palette than their previous records.

Returning to earth, White Birch paint pictures in which a folk underpinning is decidedly more evident. "Seer Believer" picks up the interrupted thread: a piano caresses the branches of trees, the vocal stretches out gently over the leaves and strings graft themselves naturally onto a memorable melody. And while "Storm-Broken Tree", amid whispered vocals, cello and languid keyboards, is one of the most intense and harrowing episodes in their entire output, the dry progress of "Your Spain" evokes desolate moorlands coloured by a few scattered leaves here and there.

But it's with the fourth track that the album reaches its creative and compositional peak. Shaping a cosmic lullaby built on faint keyboard architectures, White Birch forge a spine-tingling melody, amid ecstatic cello swells and a dreamy vocal. The enchanting notes bring back distant memories, trapped in photographic paper, which, as if by magic, seem to come back to life, to take shape again. But the magic doesn't hesitate to come to a halt.

Amid sweet slow-motion pop vignettes ("Silent Love", "June") and floating boreal melodies with an elegant, sulphurous gait ("Stand Over Me"), still more magic unfolds. Suddenly the acceleration, virtually absent since their debut, takes hold again of the reverb-drenched guitars of "Small Hours", while "We Are Not The Ones" is pure mystical ecstasy: a handful of minutes for guitar, piano and keyboards on a gentle rise. "The Astronaut" may disappoint, but the closing "New Kingdom", in which the leader's voice intertwines with Susanna's, captivates with its piano figure overlapping the keyboards for a finale that tastes like farewell. And so closes an album that strengthens the glow of the White Birch star.

After the gradual departure of several members and the band's reduction to a one-man project, Ola Fløttum promised quite some time ago that he would get back to work on a new effort. To date, however, we have no news on the matter, but we can only hope that this comet starts shining again.

And so it is that, in 2015, drawing on the knowledge and experience built up during the band's hiatus, during which he devoted himself to composing film scores, Ola Fløttum returns with The Weight Of Spring, offering a new side of his artistic expression.

Aided by "classical" musicians and composers, the Norwegian songwriter celebrates a rebirth that carries with it the shadow of the death that made it possible, between dark, spectral piano processions ("Winter Bride") and more serene choral pieces ("Lament"). The numerous instrumental tracks thus tell the story of a hard-won recovery, as the slow Norwegian thaw must be, and they also tell of Fløttum's personal journey, having lost his mother over these eight years (hence the dedication in "Mother") and had two children.

A gentle lyricism thus unfolds (the chamber-folk of the title track), built around an essential, "biorhythmic" contemplation of life ("Lay Me By The Shore"), which opens out into the shafts of light of the Kings Of Convenience-style track "The Hours".

Overall, though, the record remains somewhat two-dimensional, not to say monolithic, in expressive terms - there are plenty of predictable tracks ("Solid Dirt"), and the general impression is more that of a soundtrack for an inner film that doesn't exist. The narrative still holds up, but there isn't really enough on the songwriting side to make it truly compelling.

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