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(2018) Maarja Nuut & Ruum - muunduja
Review:
The Estonian duo of Maarja Nuut & Ruum exist in apparent contradictions. She’s a singer and violinist obsessed with old traditional songs, and he — born Hendrik Kaljujärv — has been making electronic music since he was a teen. One embraces the organic and the ancient, another the digital and modern. They’re two seemingly disparate styles, but together, the combination is something strange and new. Their debut collaboration Muunduja — whose title implies conversion, or transfiguration — is set about taking this conflicting parts and spinning them into a new language, one that uses slippery melodic lines and sleepy drones to create slipstreams between epochs, as well as dreamy connections that snap into place like new neurons, to channel ideas from then to here to hereafter.Nuut’s collaboration with Hendrik Kaljujärv (aka Ruum) is a haunting journey over fresh terrain: features might look familiar but known qualities dissolve on closer inspection leaving only the pleasure of the new. Nuut and Kaljujärv have collaborated for a number of live performances, and it seems this has helped them insinuate themselves into one another’s work so thoroughly that Muunduja feels like a single entwined vision. While Une Meeles was very much centered on voice and fiddle, it was initially a surprise how readily Nuut cedes the spotlight to Ruum’s musical palette of analog and digital synthesizers, found sounds and environmental recordings. One of the album’s pleasures is the delayed gratification that resulted because more than half the material is instrumental thus, when Nuut sings, the impact is enhanced as well as the feeling of ‘significance’, that “this is the moment she chose to sing!” rather than the presence of her voice being merely an expectation and obligation.
The album is a duet, each artist allowing the other to push forward, each knowing when to pull back and lend clarity and sharpness to the other’s gifts. Kaljujärv’s work is new to me but there’s so much talent on display, and the results are dynamic and unpredictable. The nine songs work as a coherent suite without ever feeling like mere variations. “Käed-Mäed” is the first instrumental, an aggressive yet almost danceable piece that describes a complete thought then knows when to stop. The song shudders under the thump of the drum rhythm and hisses with tense friction as a growling bass rubs tight up against distressed strings.
“Muutuja”, by contrast, cedes limelight to the fiddle, its fluid movement in stark contrast to the alarm-pulse synth and shuffling percussion that rise and rise. The song ends with an unsubtle keyboard vamp twisting back and forth over a multitracked fiddle that has become so dense it seems to shiver in place, movement passing from the acoustic instrument to the electronic. Nuut and Kaljujärv constantly ask questions of themselves — how they can use a technique in a new way, how to create a contrast and separation between these songs.
Nuut has a mastery of the small declarative sounds possible with the human voice that, subtly deployed, can punctuate a song. On “Haned Kadunud” she huffs a backing rhythm which builds to an overwhelming asthmatic attack. Similarly, on “Mahe”, she sings a wordless melody that becomes an occasional punctuating gasp threading the space between a sinuous synth and a series of arpeggiated chords before all surrender to a furrowing wind. At WOMAD, Nuut demonstrated her use of looping technology, building and layering a song culminating in its full performance. Now, the live loop has become a cliché all its own but it’s an example of Nuut’s standout talent as a musician that she is selective about the contexts in which she deploys it and she is sufficiently giving, and intelligent, as a musician that she is happy for it to become part of the deep background of a track rather than ramming gestures at the listener.
The final song — which shares its name with Nuut’s previous album is a haunting in written form. Kaljujärv’s backing is, for the most part, a soft shiver of static like ruffled bedding, human breath, occasionally the delicate ripple of wind-chimes on a distant porch. Nuut meanwhile builds up her signature bed of vocal loops to underpin her swaying tune. Everything, her voice, the music, it all feels gloriously indistinct and unreal, only in the final minute does the slide of a fiddle bow pull the listener toward something physically tangible and real.
Tracklist:
01. Haned kadunud.flac
02. Käed-Mäed.flac
03. Muutuja.flac
04. Mahe.flac
05. Takisan.flac
06. Kuud kuulama.flac
07. Kurb laulik.flac
08. Miniature C.flac
09. Une meeles.flac
Summary:
Country: Estonia
Genre: alternative folk, electronic
Media Report:
Source : CD
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : ~ 679-811 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
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