I’ve been a patient boy. And today all my quiet suffering and yearning pays off. Hanne Hukkelberg’s new album comes out today and she begins touring the states this week. What Hukkelberg offers this time around on Rykestrasse 68 is fortunately more of the same: beautifully textured percussion, swaying rhythms and her exquisitely delicate voice. Her bicycle returns on this recording along with 29 other different instruments. The best way to listen to Hanne Hukkelberg is to simply shut up. Shut up your preconceived ideas of what a pop song should sound like. Shut up the glut of voices and sounds you’ve been listening to all day today and let her swab your skull clean, like a slice of aural ginger clearing your head of everything before it, and hear the world for the first time again.
A Cheater’s Armoury [MP3, 5.3MB, 128kbps]
(Original Post 10/25/05):
My eight year old started up on the clarinet this year in school. Never having played a reed instrument, I took a stab at it. Wow. Blowing into that little hole to produce any sound besides that of cats mating was impossible. Lucky for us and our neighbors, it clicked with my son much quicker. Segue to a recent CD shopping spree and I bought this Hanne Hukkelberg album based on the cover art alone. Several tracks feature a gorgeous clarinet and I was anxious to play it at home. The rest of the album was simply a wonderful surprise. Ms Hukkelberg’s calm, gentle vocals evoke a female David Sylvian, and her minimal, jazz-like compositions played on, among other things, pots, pans, wineglasses, and bicycle spokes, make for an organic version of Björk.
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Let me begin today’s post with a favorite passage from the 