There’s a ten second sample on this album at the end of Det Blev Våra Liv that tells you everything about Fågelle as a producer. It’s fairly incongruous when you first hear it, it’s a car driving past with a pumping Techno beat blasting from its speakers. Nothing of note there, is there? Nothing we don’t hear in the city every night?
Well that’s where you’re wrong, Fågelle got an EDM producer to remix the track it comes out of and then tracked down a member of a specific Swedish sub culture of youths that revel in their sub par cars know as, “Raggare,” a nostalgic rural hobby that involves cheap cars, loud stereos and parking lots. Then she got them to blast the remix out of their stereo whilst she captured it in a field recorder. This was made even more complicated when her initial driver’s car broke down and she had to find a car meet in the rural town of Halland and ask a stranger to help her make the sample. All of this for a ten second sample you’ll probably miss on first listen. This is the attention to detail that makes Bränn min jord an astonishing listen.
Fågelle is not only a keen sound artist these recordings are ear candy for the main event: Fågelle’s incredible singing and composition. Opener “Riv Meg” sets the scene with its intimate, up close introduction giving way to a crescendo of vast orchestration and passion before retreating back, as if she’s gone outside and back inside again to finish the track as if she’s speaking privately to you. This track also features the sound of a top contemporary dancer providing a rhythm section with her movements on a wooden floor in a hall in the town.
This entire album is a love letter to this rural inland of Halland, its population is around 400 and Fågelle has found a lot to capture. It’s almost as if she’s taking photos but with her music instead of a camera. This approach gives this album a depth of humanity that AI will never replicate.
Many Scandinavian artists have been inspired by the beautiful Nordic scenery but few have got an entire town involved. It’s not all acoustic either, there are masterful displays of glitchy Electronica like on “All Mina Namn” where her intuitive use of space uses a jazz drummer as a colour in her sonic palette to bring beams of light into the shade of the programmed synth work. The production here is as perfect as I’ve heard from many top tier electronic labels and I definitely had to double take when I saw this was self released.
The title of the album translates into English as burn my soil a reference to the tradition of burning the ground to spark new life and when you know the message behind the album it makes perfect sense for Fågelle may have honed her craft in the cities of Berlin and Gothenburg but she had to come back to her soil to spark new life in her compositions.
There’s several moments throughout this album that are genuinely heartwarming, the sound of Fågelle, inspired by a viral TikTok clip, singing along to a ventilation unit whist she walked around with her partner wearing lavalier mics is a lovely whimsical touch on “Sång Til Ventilation”.
She exits her musical performance on this album on the piano lead “Det Djur Som ä Du”, a wonderful parting ballad that circles back to the dynamics of the opening track, most other artists would call that a wrap as it feels and sounds to your ears as a perfect goodbye. Fågelle is no normal talent, she realised the perfect finishing touch whilst she was recording the town’s prestigious brass band in a local church. The conductor is heard talking to the musicians and it roughly translates as, “I think we’ll end with this one,” before the band play a beautiful hymn. Fågelle thought it was so beautiful and the phrase was so perfect that she gave them the last track on her album, of course with a little of her production added.
Then Fågelle knew this album was done.
This album is exceptionally good and you should definitely listen to it. Fågelle is a rare, individual talent that should be protected at all costs.
