reviews / 2019

FREDRIK RASTEN - Six Moving Guitars

Name: FREDRIK RASTEN – Six Moving Guitars
Item: Six Moving Guitars
Rating: 6.5
Author: Roberto Mandolini

2019 (Sofa)

other sounds

by Roberto Mandolini

6.5

Arches, Pip, Volumes and Oker are the projects that have made Fredrik Rasten's name known in recent years. “Six Moving Guitars” is the new record from the Norwegian musician, a kind of solo debut, though six musicians share the instruments on the album (Catharina Vehre Gresslien, Erlend Olderskog Albertsen, Hans Pålsen Kjorstad, Marie Bergby Handeland, Mathilde Øverland, along with Fredrik Rasten himself), as the album title itself makes clear.

The five tracks on the set were conceived to interact with the movements of the performers: the open tunings of the guitars convey the sense of freedom that the musicians' footsteps express, with the same rhythm as their strides on the ground. “Wandering”, “Circling”, “Running”, “Pendulating” read almost like instructions for anyone wishing to reinterpret the work. The opening of the record is a bath of ecstasy built on minimal repetitions, woven into a gripping narrative like a Byzantine mosaic.

The sound of footsteps behind the guitars' harmonics also serves to delimit the sonic space in which the harmonies move: a concert hall, a theatre, an open space in which every movement seems possible. The closing track, “Pendulating”, is almost a warning: the ambient noises vanish, as if, faced with such wonder, the world had stopped to listen.

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01/08/2019

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Roberto Mandolini, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition