If – as Mojo magazine said in its 2012 rave review – REBEKKA KARIJORD’s last release, We Become Ourselves, was “an album that creates its own world”, then the Stockholm based musician’s latest collection is an album that helps generously furnish, and enlarge upon, worlds created by others. The pragmatically titled Music For Film And Theatre gathers together fifteen (largely) instrumental pieces written and produced by Karijord over the last half dozen or so years for films, plays and dance performances. It’s a task that she has frequently embraced with relish.
“I've always found that it’s a good complement to my solo work,” she explains, “since I get to experiment sonically, and push my musical boundaries and knowledge. I also really enjoy the process of finding sounds through loose experimentation.”
Originally from Sandnessjøen, just south of the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway, KARIJORD moved to Sweden a decade ago, where she’s composed music for over 30 films, modern dance and theatre pieces, as well as writing plays and short stories. She’s also acted in films and theatre since the age of 12, while Cirkus Cirkör’s international travelling performance, Wear It Like A Crown, is centered upon KARIJORD’s song of the same title. (She also provided all the additional music for the performance, which has now toured the world for four years, playing over 400 shows for 200,000 people.)
Making some of this far from ‘incidental’ music available is an idea she’s had for a while, but it’s only recently that she’s been able to take a break long enough from touring, composing for new projects and starting work on her next record to explore her archives. The result is a collection that unusually – given the genesis of the material – operates successfully outside of its original context, providing a whole that KARIJORD describes as “soothing, yet stirring and complex in its layers and contrast”
Though elements of her previous work are undeniably evident during Music For Film And Theatre, it represents an alternative side to KARIJORD’s muse, with vocals employed as instruments rather than as a song’s focus, and her fascination with stringed instruments also very much to the fore. “They’re an attempt to get away from the melody driven formula,” she elaborates of the compositions, “to challenge my sense of form, to dare to be more abstract than I allow myself when I write traditional songs. My solo songs have to stand up for themselves, whereas film music pieces are players in an orchestra. I see them as something underlining the emotional thread, the unsaid, the fundamental tone chiming throughout. The music is supposed to capture that, in a subtle way, sometimes pulling along with it, sometimes working against it: creating understanding, creating friction. Sometimes the music can be a manipulator, but in a caring way, softly resting a hand on the viewer’s back, saying ‘Go this way...’”
Music For Film And Theatre provides a gorgeous, frequently lush experience. It’s one to which KARIJORD herself often accurately applies the label ‘ambient’: within the repetition of tracks like ‘Madrigal’, ‘Salhus’, ‘Migratory Birds’ and ‘Morula’ there’s an undeniable Eno-esque quality, though inevitably KARIJORD moves in different directions to the godfather of the ambient movement. Elsewhere there are other comparably experimental excursions: the angelic choral vocals and Arvo Pärt violin of ‘Nowhere Home’, the ethereal, mystical ‘The End, and ‘Kjaere Gud’, which conjures up the remarkable ghosts of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. There are also airier tracks, like the placid, moving yet strangely tense ‘Snö’, the gentle piano strains of ‘Waltz For Norma’, and ‘Anchor Boy’, as delicately melancholic as anything Agnes Obel has delivered.
There will be more to come, too. Now that Music For Film And Theatre has been compiled, KARIJORD is currently working on a further three film projects, and has also begun work writing for her next album. For the time being, however, Music For Film And Theatre is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy another, mesmerising side to an extraordinary artist’s talents.
