.png)
2 hours ago
4
Just released at a fittingly ghoulish time of year is the final part of this collaboration between Ume Sámi vocalist Sara Ajnnak and British folk-improv duo the Ciderhouse Rebellion. The artists’ joint Landscapes of the Spirit project, delivered in four releases over 2025, has cycled through life from Geärkakame (Cradle) to Gárránis (Raven), Hálluo (Desire) to Jábmieájmmuo (Shadows Between Worlds), meshing the dramatic folk improvisations of fiddler Adam Summerhayes and accordionist Murray Grainger with a singer whose Arctic language is one of the most threatened in the world.
Ajnnak has a commanding grasp of one of Sámi culture’s oldest vocal art forms, the joik, which expresses musical portraits of people, places and creatures through short lyrics, or with lyric-free sounds. On Jábmieájmmuo’s title track, her vocals whip between stuttering high notes, low ululations and panting breaths that build to heavy-metal-worthy growls, supported by wheezy drones and wriggling slips of fiddle melody. Ajnnak is representing the nåejtie here, a central figure in Sámi society who conversed between worlds, at a time when industry and the climate crisis threaten her culture’s existence for ever. A baby’s gurgle cuts in at one point, like a haunting.
The other parts of this project are immersive, but less brain-twistingly intense. On Geärkakame (Cradle), the least powerful set of the four, the slow track Vuöstiebiegga (Whirlwind of Whispers) nonetheless brilliantly builds a sense of gentle panic. On Gárránis (Raven), Geärkkie – Whispers Through Stone includes a vocal riff ripe for an ambient rave remix, while Hálluo (Desire) casts Ajnnak throughout as a fascinatingly older, softer soul, with Summerhayes and Grainger’s playing, more regular in metre, sounding supportive and longing behind her. But it’s the series’ dark climax – gibbering and howling to the elements – that hits hardest, and leaves you longing for more.
Also out this month
Orkney-born Merlyn Driver’s It Was Also Sometimes Daylight is a gorgeous debut and a great follow-up to his 2022 multi-artist project, Simmerdim: Curlew Sounds, his voice and guitar recalling the rich magic of Dick Gaughan and Nic Jones.
Jake Xerxes Fussell and British-born guitarist and producer James Elkington have paired up for Rebuilding (Fat Possum), a soundtrack to Max Walker-Silverman’s film about a rancher rebuilding his life, but their set of soft-hearted instrumentals occasionally curdles into excessive prettiness.
As long as some artists’ LPs, Lisa O’Neill’s six-track EP, The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right (Rough Trade), reminds us of her bracing talent, increasingly winning audiences worldwide. It includes her excellent cover of Bob Dylan’s All the Tired Horses, which closed Peaky Blinders’ last season, and political tirades in the title track and Homeless in the Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age), her bloodied, bruised vocals sharpening their blunt messages.
