LARS FREDRIK FRØISLIE – Fire Fortellinger

What a lovely surprise this is album is! The wildly skilled keyboard wizard of Wobbler known as Lars Fredrik Frøislie will release this colorful, heartfelt, and superbly written 4-song gem in early June via Karisma Records, and if prog is your thing then make a note of this one.

Fire Fortellinger leans heavily toward 70s prog rock but with more than enough charisma and identity to stand out and sound original. As the title of the LP so neatly suggests, each composition is basically a story and what the four of them share is an inherent sense of melancholy that is not unlike the underlying aura of Wobbler’s timeless outputs, but Lars Fredrik is not rehashing old ideas or themes here, mind you. Vibrant and filled to the brim with stunning melodies, the album feels like a proper odyssey with a palpable sense of warmth, analogue charm, and class to it. From epic to folk-esque and further on to soul-stirring and quirky, Fire Fortellinger recalls some of the greats of the past while simultaneously looking to the future. The material is inventive, gloriously unpredictable, and steeped in an atmosphere that is uniquely personal and capable of conjuring up mental pictures of the very things that have inspired its creation such as medieval times, folklore, wintry Norwegian landscapes, and mythology. On top of it all, there is an intuitive and spontaneous vibe to the endeavor, which is brilliant.