New Borders – Crossing Borders in the North

Interview by Kristoffer Møllegaard, photo by Helene Bergjord

On December 1th. the Scandinavia-based improvisational trio New Borders released their debut album North on Copenhagen label CRRNT Collective. The group was formed in Gothenburg in 2021 and consists of British trumpeter Ben Rodney, Swedish saxophonist Adrian Åsling Sellius and Finnish Antti Lähdesmäki, who in the context of this release plays organ and piano.

These three players make for a rather unusual combination of instruments – with the exception of the piano, they’re all wind instruments, and none of them are traditionally rhythmic. It doesn’t stop there though as the band has invited two additional musicians to feature on the album – Norwegian guitarist Viktor Bomstad and Swedish organist Karin Nelson – on the first and second halves of the album respectively. Besides their additional (but still non-rhythmic) instrumentation, they both bring their joik, a traditional form of singing of the Sámi people of the far Scandinavian North. All together it makes for a record that often sounds as if its players are searching through the darkness together, sounding out uncharted terrain, navigating through nooks and crannies of an ancient landscape difficult to parse on unsteady feet, sometimes timidly tip-toeing, sometimes stumbling, occasionally pausing for rest. Doom-laden overpowering electric guitar and staccato screeching horns join beds of church organ and feedback fuzz. As in nature, one scenery soon gives way to the next.

It’s a release that stands out in more ways than one, and so I reached out for an interview with the three aforementioned core members of New Borders, Ben, Adrian and Antti to talk about improvisation, collaboration, and the role of traditional art forms in the modern world and contemporary music.

Beginnings

However, we began with beginnings. I was curious as to how a British person, a Swede, and a Finn would meet and decide to form a band together. Turns out they met in the same organic way that most people do, through shared interests and converging friend circles. Ben would be the one to bring the three of them together, first meeting Adrian:

“Me and Adrian met through a mutual friend whilst I was living in Gothenburg. We would walk around the city finding strange places to play and make recordings. Random tunnels and bridges, it was Covid and there were no gigs so we took to recording out on the streets.”

Ben later met Antti because of their shared master’s programme, but the actual details of their encounter describes a connection made through much more random circumstances than simply going to the same school. Antti tells it as follows:

“I first met Ben when we were studying in the same master’s programme which includes studies at several Scandinavian music academies. I remember bumping into each other at a tram stop in Gothenburg and realising we’d both be there for the semester – actually at that time I already should have graduated but the pandemic changed the plans. Ben asked something in the lines of “you wouldn’t by any chance play the organ?”, and it just so happened that I had recently dipped my toes into that realm and was looking for any chances to play it with people.”

Ben goes on to describe how the three of them would just turn off the lights and play. There was no agenda, no intention of forming a band together – they just enjoyed playing together and so kept on doing it. Ben ascribes their musical kinship to the fact that they “…shared a similar need at that time for a slow moving, melancholic aesthetic”, to which Adrian adds:

“I think that the joy of experimentation is what brought us together and the sound felt quite unique, so we wanted to see what more we could make of it. Since we all have been living in different places throughout these last couple of years, we really didn’t discuss that much of what we’re going to do except to play.”

“the nature of the instruments definitely steers the music toward a more tonal or texture-based approach to improvisation.”

Adrian Åsling Sellius

In the press release for their album, they themselves drew attention to the rather unorthodox combination of instruments and the potential challenges, but also interesting directions, that such a combination might bring with it. I asked them to elaborate on this point and offer some insight into how the music on “North” was shaped by these factors. Adrian explains that “…the nature of the instruments definitely steers the music toward a more tonal or texture-based approach to improvisation. But that is also as much in us as musicians”, and Ben elaborates:

“The main challenge is the lack of a traditional rhythm instrument. This is challenging as things can become static and vertical without that forward motion that rhythm instruments usually provide. But this also allows us the opportunity to carve out new roles for our melodic/harmonic instruments and then it becomes interesting, when it’s everyone’s job to keep the music going forward, you have to get creative about it.”

Antti goes on to speak to the specific hurdles involved with using the organ as a primary instrument in the constellation:

“Then of course most of the organs are found in churches, and most of the churches have quite specific acoustics, which almost becomes an instrument on its own. Especially when it comes to the extended techniques, every organ is quite different, and the churches as acoustic spaces also react differently, which only adds to the unpredictability of the whole situation.”

Collaborations

Given the restrictions that their choice of instrumentation imposes on their creative work, I ask them if they were intentionally creating the need for their group to collaborate with other musicians. They answer that it’s neither intentional or that great of a need, and point to their EP “EP-01”, which they released earlier in 2023, and which, other than a single track featuring Latvian drummer Sebastians Macats, indeed does only feature the three of them. Ben explains that for their first full-length release “…it felt natural to incorporate a more collaborative process as a way to expand the sound. In this improvisational approach adding one new element can flip everything on its head, change up the sound, that’s exciting and we wanted to embrace that.” Antti adds:

“Personally, I feel like free improvisation really is an art form that comes alive when experienced in person, and I have been struggling with the dilemma that I sometimes fail to emotionally connect to improvised music on recordings. That is also why I really liked the idea of finding a concept or an added layer for “North” through the collaborations. For this album, collaborating with the Sámi artists brought a depth to the emotional content of the music that we couldn’t have reached on our own.”

These two Sámi artists – guitarist Viktor Bomstad and organist Karin Nelson – both have personal connections to the members of New Borders. Karin had been Antti’s organ teacher at the academy in Gothenburg, and he and Ben both knew Viktor from Oslo. Ben describes a relationship with Viktor that goes beyond the musical, but then ends up feeding back into the art:

“We always had a fun time together, we used to play football at lunch, we would recreate famous goals that we remember from childhood, that was fun. We had long conversations about all manner of topics. I mention this because quite often this is how the collaboration process starts: Do you feel good around each other? What do you chat about? These are simple things, but it’s usually how it starts.”

Antti goes on to muse on exactly what kind of impact these two featuring artists would have on the music of “North”:

“For me, it was also very inspiring that neither is necessarily known from a free improvisation context despite being highly experienced in improvisation both as performers and researchers. I think that is exactly the kind of stimuli that we are looking for in collaborations: In this case it forced us as a band to also find new approaches – to really find new borders and then cross over those.”

Traditions

As previously mentioned, the two featuring artists on the album Viktor Bomstad and Karin Nelson both bring their joik in addition to their instruments. Joik is a traditional singing style of the indigenous Sámi people of Northern Scandinavia that has undergone a treatment similar to many indigenous’s people’s art forms throughout the world – suppression carried out by assimilationist Christian settlers, but also what seems to be a modern day reintegration of joik into both indigenous and popular culture. Some joiks have few or no lyrics, and are instead a kind of scat singing. They are traditionally personal songs, meant to evoke a person, a place, or a thing.

“The colonization and oppression of Sámi is unfortunately and shamefully far from being over, and historically the Nordic church has had an instrumental role in all of it.”

Antti Lähdesmäki

Both joiks on “North” are standout tracks. Bomstad’s “Gumpe (The Wolf)” turns into a guttural, howling climax to the slowly building intensity of the first half of the record, while Nelson’s “Gillesnuolen Vuöllie” has a soothing melancholy to it, that acts as the perfect counterpoint to Bomstad’s. The rage of youth tempered by the wisdom of maturity. 

While none of the three core members of New Borders are Sámi themselves and have no personal ties with joik, there is still a relationship to be found, as Antti explains:

“From the very beginning, there was something about the soundscape of New Borders that felt reminiscent of the North Scandinavian nature, its vast and barren shapes and forms, and how there are whole detailed worlds hidden within if you stop to look more closely. There has always been something meditative and spiritual for me about those landscapes, yet I have never before really looked into the indigenous Nordic culture (Sámi culture), where the ancient wisdom of that nature lies.”

And he goes on to recognise the irony of melding the worlds of church organs and Sámi culture:

“On the other hand, [because of needing an organ] we are principally forced into playing in churches, which sets an interesting contrast: I felt like the music is emergent from a certain naturalistic spirituality, yet we can only perform that music in spaces built for Christian worship service – which is not only theologically quite the opposite approach but also an active antagonist to what the music is all about. The colonization and oppression of Sámi is unfortunately and shamefully far from being over, and historically the Nordic church has had an instrumental role in all of it.”

“I prefer to exist within the contradictions and explore them from the inside and my place within them.”

Ben Rodney

Asking them about traditional, indigenous art forms in general, and whether they have an interest in exploring them in other ways. Ben mentions that, being from London, he has always been immersed in music from different parts of the world. He thinks that, while participating in such art forms belonging to cultures that aren’t your own, it’s important to recognise the fact that you are an outsider, and work with it rather than against it:

“It raises many important questions, including around the topic of appropriation. Rather than trying to avoid this topic, I prefer to exist within the contradictions and explore them from the inside and my place within them. It’s the reality and we should talk about it, not avoid the topic. That’s my feeling anyhow. I try to perceive music-making with no limits, everything is relevant, two people having a conversation in 7/11, global politics, clowning around with an absurd improvised speech on stage, it all has its place. It’s something I’m working towards.”

Antti adds a comment on how the globalisation of music cultures can often have the unintended side effect of alienating you from your own cultural heritage:

“It was an interesting realisation how the tradition of my native people sounded quite alien to me, while I felt at home within tango from Argentina, Cuban salsa, American jazz or Hermeto Pascoal’s wild mixture of Brazilian styles for example!”

As for the future of New Borders, it’s not something they’ve discussed in great detail yet. They’ve got some concerts lined up as a trio in 2024 – including one in Copenhagen on February 9th. But instead of making plans for the longer term, they seem content to return to their starting point: They enjoy playing together, so they will keep doing it.

Info: “North” was released via CRRNT Collective on December 1, 2023.