FJALL – FROM THE ROUGH HILL (Discus) (2023)

Turn the lights low (or off) and play this intriguing album late at night and a quite unique atmosphere is created. The twin drumming of Fran Comyn and Richard Jackson is unlike anything I can recall hearing, very risqué, and working in an incomprehensibly unconventional way – I don’t know how to describe it, but it defines the undertow of the music, an ever-constant glue in a cornucopia of exotic sounds provided by Jan Todd’s harps, cello and flute, electronics and field recordings, and most distinctively, waterphone, with Fran’s bowls, gongs and cymbal also providing coloration to the music. Then there is Martin Archer who adds his own flute, clarinets, harmonicas and recorders to music that can be unnerving and otherworldly as well as lenitive and dreamlike.

There are twelve parts, best listened to as a whole. The band describes it as elemental improvisational music. It is difficult to make comparisons, but the Third Ear Band and Jade Warrior immediately spring to mind, although these links are tentative.