Fredrik: Trilogi

Fredrik, an outgrowth of the Swedish group the LK, released its first album in 2008. Trilogi seems a little softer, a little less song-reliant, and a little more trusting of the listener’s willingness to absorb an atmosphere that is something like the mysterious and distant organic stir you hear when you put your head underwater. It’s a tink and an mmm fluttering in the current. A thumb piano, a harp, an ooh-ooh chorus, and some husky, harmless male singing creates an altogether ethereal, foresty sound. The spaces between the sharper notes in “Vanmyren” suggest a classical Japanese influence, and the human voice here is sometimes intrusive, nailing the ethereal to the present with the specificity of words. It might be at its best in “Ner” where every line it sings is echoed by a harp and then swarmed by the angel choir, leaving it on the borderline between being concealed and revealing everything, a stripteasing phantom.