Hubro is my label of the year, this time. Andreas Meland is the man in the background. A programm of excellent, very good, and good works that, in 2017, even surpasses last year’s output of a Nordic / Norwegian spectrum between free improvisation, chamber folk, electric wilderness, altered states of mind & sound, minimal drone studies, post-exotica, songs & sounds & atmospheres. They even put out an album by the band aptly called „1982“, including a church organ being deprived of all its gravitas.
Now Erik Honoré’s second Hubro album ist out, „Unrest“, and, as he has told during bis lecture in Kristiansand about making music in dark and turbulent times, he sees it as the „dark-eyed sister“ of his excellent first solo album „Heliographs“. In fact, it’s a shadowy affair, with a spoonful of atonality and testing the limits of high-pitched violins, free floating, slow piano runs – and a theatre of voices, hiding, murmuring, wondering. Not to forget „The Sheriffs of Nothingness“!
Erik Honore and his companions (yes, a great cast!) know how to build up suspense and release, and the sequence of the tracks is immaculate. You have to listen to it as an album, and, if you want to do yourself a favour, in the dark. While being immersed, you’ll easily be haunted by the thrill of dissonant textures, well placed grooves and swirling melodic lines that happen when you least expect them to appear. The last track is the perfect closer, an apparently simple song with an irresistible tune. And, well, part of the magic of Hubro albums is the cover art of Yokoland (Aslak Gurholt and Thomas Nordby) – for „Unrest“ it works as warning sign – and invitation!