Eva Lindal - Bäver (2020)

Swedish siblings Eva and Lindal entered the studio in the summer of 2019, armed only with a few song titles, and some talk about their love and ambivalence for the tradition of Western artistic music. Beyond that, everything was improvised from the two violinists (Eva also playing the viola).

The result is a one hour ensemble that wanders across a broad spectrum of what is possible from a violin - often adopting a fairly traditional and melodic, albeit curvy, old school familiarity, while sometimes stretching the instrument, using it percussively and impulsively to widen the sound palette.

It is however quite purist, without post-production artifacts or live effects to really extend this abstraction, and what you hear is two people, in a room, who play against each other and converse, in length and in detail, using their violins rather than their voices.

Sometimes there is an interesting gap between melody and discord. In the title song, you get the impression that an instrument draws a fairly simple romantic melody that would suit a period drama by Jane Austen on television, but the other violin is cheeky, plays against it, almost mocks of him with his short spontaneous and hopping expressions. The tension is strong but constant in the longest composition "Olivier".