The Secret Carpet Club – Village

Publisher/Label: Nordic Stomp (Finland)
Release date: 2011
EAN: 0013964472035
Cat.No.: NOSTCD001

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Tracks:

I dagarna fem (trad. A. Kristenssen, Klädesholmen, Sweden)
Lynx Lynx (comp. Vidar Skrede)
Fridas och Karins brudvals (comp. Emma Johansson)
Bonden (trad. K. Nilsdotter, Eda, Sweden) / Tor Pærsens Hambo (trad. S. Fjeldstad, Holt, Norway)
I denna ljuva sommartid (trad. N. Bengtsson, Grästorp, Sweden, lyrics: P. Gerhardt, J. von Düben, C. O. Angeldorff, B. G. Hallqvist)
Se stjärnorna (trad. L. Larsson, Ytterby, Sweden)
Tre lå (trad. A. Claesson, Orust, Sweden) / Granhilds Polska (comp. Vidar Skrede)
Röd, inte brun (comp. Carl Nyqvist)
I Österrike (trad. L. Larsson, Ytterby, Sweden, lyrics trad. H. Wikeryd, Knippla, Sweden)
Tro aldrig (trad. S. Hult, Sunnersberg, Sweden)
Bullaremarschen (trad. N. Olsson, Naverstad, Sweden)

Credits:

All arrangements by The Secret Carpet Club, except track 6 by Emma Johansson and track 8 by Carl Nyqvist & Vidar Skrede.

Sound & Design:
Recorded in “Gula Huset”, Lidköping, Sweden, December 4-10, 2010.
Mixed and mastered by Hannu Oskala
Produced by Vidar Skrede
Photographs by Håkan Berg, Ying Feng Johansson
Cover design by Vidar Skrede

Thanks to:
Daniel Westin, Pontus Thorsson and Hannu Oskala for lending us their recording equipment, and Carl’s family for letting us record in “Gula Huset”.

Press release:

A warm and grooving debut from this Scandinavian folk trio. The sound is an acoustic weave of guitar, fiddle, flute and voices, through summerly tracks pervaded by an attractive combination of sparks and low shoulders. A CD of Scandinavian village music!

Village – a debut CD from the Scandinavian folk group The Secret Carpet Club, with Emma Johansson, Carl Nyqvist and Vidar Skrede. While The Secret Carpet Club is a relatively new constellation, the album presents three well-established folk musicians, deeply rooted in their local traditions and, not least, in their own individual musical expression. Guitar, fiddle and various flutes weave together to make a rich, rhythmic and dynamic musical fabric, with Emma’s voice in the foreground and Carl and Vidar providing the harmonic background. Songs and instrumentals are here in equal measure. The material is mainly from Sweden’s west coast, but a Norwegian tune joins the repertoire, along with four tunes composed by group members. The songs range from tender love songs, ballads and chorales to frisky sailor songs, cheeky comic ballads and a shout out over the ocean to missing sailors. The instrumentals offer warm, rich and sprightly polskas, a romantic bridal waltz and a fervent, thundering march by way of conclusion. All in all – a cohesive, dynamic and pleasing album.

An appropriate “file-under” genre for this album, bearing in mind its title, is “village music”, but it also belongs under “folk”, “roots”, sometimes “Scandinavian country”, and even “retro folk”. Several tracks reveal a tiny inclination towards Celtic, Canadian and American folk styles, while the warm and somewhat naïve approach to the music shows a certain inspiration from the folk-prog movement of the 70s. But basically this album belongs under “Scandinavian folk”, and this is neither concealed nor solemnly drawn attention to.

With the album Village, The Secret Carpet Club invite the listener into their living room, onto their carpet, in their musical village somewhere between Norway and Sweden. It is a warm, dynamic album, glancing sentimentally backwards and a flirtatiously sideways to the west. With its pulse and atmosphere, Village represents a heartfelt and playful contribution to Scandinavian folk music, eager to please the ear and get the foot tapping.

The Secret Carpet Club are:
Emma Johansson – vocals and flutes, Carl Nyqvist – fiddle and backing, and Vidar Skrede – guitar and backing vocals. The three musicians met as master students in Nordic folk music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 2008. Drawn to each other’s playing styles and to the results of the unique musical chemistry that arose between them, they founded the trio The Secret Carpet Club. Since then, they have held concerts and toured around Scandinavia. In 2009 they released the EP Popular Music from Scandinavia. One of the four tracks, “I denna ljuva sommartid” is included on Village.

Reviews:

Lira nr 2, 2011

– Trio with a feeling for the music from the West –

This is a CD that kicks off with a stunning guitar groove in the sailor song “I dagarna fem” from Klädesholmen in Bohuslän, a tune that could be the parade example of the west wind that is blowing through the band’s music. You can find an Irish relationship in the flute playing, and the fiddle with a vigorous figure, sounds just as much like bluegrass as a Scandinavian fiddlers’ reunion festival.
All together in a dense alloy of the intensive swinging folk fusion by the guitars highly rhythmic accompany.”

“… an imaginative reminder that the folk music’s strange kinship may do breath taking diagonals between places like Lidköping and the Appalachian Mountains…”
– Jonas Bergroth

– A tasty and solid Scandinavian folk music release –

“The whole production is otherwise pervaded by an attractive combination of sparks and low shoulders. Throughout the record is a rhythmic nerve that doesn’t overshadow the dynamics that the three exhibit between them. In the rear view mirror we can see the folk-prog movement of the 70s. These are not people that are afraid of cool vocal arrangements or of an occasional unexpected chord! Nor some rather subtle measures in the production that gives the sound a warm richness.”
– Snorre F.

– Village – a Nordic summer –

“… when the trio play around with the sounds in the music and throws in vocal arrangements and rhythmic variations, memories occurs of the free and exploring time of folk music in Sweden in the 70s. At the same time no doubt is left that the members of The Secret Carpet Club are extensive educated in the traditional music and master it to their fingertips, which we have gotten in habit of expecting from young folk musicians. But here is something we maybe could not expect. Nordic folk music releases from recent years often reminds of the Nordic winter. They are affected by great seriousness. This Album reminds more of the Nordic summer. There is sincerity and seriousness also, but the undertone is light and it is the joy and lust for life that dominates.”
– Audun Kjus