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Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025)
Review:
On the album Mirra, the innovative folk musician Benedicte Maurseth once again invites us to the vast Hardangervidda plateau—this time with a focus on the wild reindeer. When Benedicte Maurseth released the album Hárr in 2022, the visionary Hardanger fiddle player was praised for creating a masterpiece. Her blend of the distinctive sound of the Hardanger fiddle and the use of concrete sounds from wildlife immersed listeners in a unique soundscape. For Hárr, she received the prestigious Nordic Music Prize, and the album was named one of the world’s top ten folk music releases of the year by The Guardian. Now she releases the long-awaited follow-up Mirra, which, like Hárr, is a concept album where concrete sound plays a central role in the compositions. This time, the focus is on the wild reindeer, native to Maurseth's home area of Eidfjord in Hardanger. The work follows elements of the reindeer's distinctive sounds and annual cycle, as in “The Calf Rises,” “Summer Grazing,” and “Hunting March,” as well as their behavior and masterful adaptation to the nature they live in harmony with. Mirra is an old, forgotten dialect word from Hardanger, describing when reindeer run together in a circling pattern—both to keep warm and to ward off predators. The word was also used to describe a time when reindeer “teemed” in large numbers. The music is repetitive and marked by the hypnotic repetitions of folk music, also inspired by American minimalism, krautrock, and free improvised music. The concept and music are presented and composed by Benedicte Maurseth and further developed and arranged in collaboration with her outstanding fellow musicians: Håkon Stene on melodic percussion, Mats Eilertsen on bass and electronics, and Morten Qvenild on keyboards. The album was recorded by Morten Qvenild at Ugla Lyd Studio in Nesodden in 2024, and produced by Benedicte Maurseth and Jørgen Træen. — bandcamp
Track List:
1. Mirra
2. Dagar med vind
3. Kalven reiser seg
4. Sommarbeite
5. Kvitkrull
6. Jaktmarsj
7. Nysnø over reinlav
8. Simleflokk under månen
Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk, jazz
Origin: Norway 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.3.0 (UTC 2013-05-26)
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