KALANDRA – new album out

Norwegian alternative folk band Kalandra are now releasing their new album ‘A Frame of Mind’. Following their successful debut ‘The Line’ and tours with Leprous and a co-headliner tour with A.A. Williams, the band are ready  to demonstrate staggering development over the past years with their new songs.

It’s a paradox that the guiding principle that’s driven Oslo’s Kalandra through 13 years’ worth of hardship, sacrifice, determination and the nurturing of an ever-growing, devoted community of fans has been to ask a simple but potent question: where do I belong? It’s a question with many dimensions, be it spiritual, personal, our relationship with a world out of balance, or the space that exists for a band who have always defied easy categorisation.

Over the course of one EP, an exquisite debut album, “The Line”, that emerged after 10 years of line-up changes, musical refinement and the relocation from the Liverpool art school where they first met, as well as a deeply atmospheric soundtrack for the videogame, “Kingdom Two Crowns: Norse Land”, the Norwegian/Swedish quartet have used elements of Norse folk, Scandic pop and alt and progressive rock without being beholden to any of them. In the process, and aerated by frontwoman Katrine Stenbekk’s sublime, stratosphere-ruffled vocals that belong to the same rarefied realms as artists such as Eivør, Aurora and Gåte’s Gunnhild Sundli, they’ve woven their own restless yet immersive world. It’s one that fuses fragility and fortitude with a rare capacity for self-reflection, mapping out wholly individual internal terrain that resonates across genre and scene borders, and on both the most vast and intimate of scales.

In true Kalandra fashion, the band’s new album, “A Frame Of Mind”, doesn’t just tell a story, it embodies one. Emphasising both the delicacy and the dynamism of “The Line”, both sonically and lyrically it gives voice to a shared sense of displacement, and the strength needed to navigate circumstances that can feel open-ended and unsettled. From the first, elegantly acoustic cadences of the Tool-tinged “I Am”, it’s the sound of being drawn in to the most confidential of endeavours, Katrine’s self-reflective, gossamer-fine lilt searching for a way to deal with past wrongs and focus on one’s own narrative as a path towards healing, as the song meticulously brews up a storm of deliverance.

For all the space and scope it allows itself, “A Frame Of Mind” is a transformative experience, underpinned by a constant sense of motion and a feeling of one’s way towards resolution, as if new senses are emerging and being tested to their fullest extent. Through “Are You Ready?”s understated chant that ushers in a metallic crescendo, “Bardaginn”’s liberated Norse ritualism riven with tungsten-weight riffs ,the pastoral romanticism infusing lead single “The State Of The World” and “Segla”’s cinematic swells of neo-classicism to the closing acoustic campfire folk of “I Remember A Time”, “A Frame Of Mind” is an ongoing journey of self-discovery, with the organic sensation of unfolding in real time.

For all the plaudits Kalandra have now gained, the rapturously received tours with Wardruna, Leprous and A.A. Williams, their viral cover of Wardruna’s “Helvegen” coming close to 6 million views on YouTube and over 7 million streams on Spotify, the closely-knit four piece – completed by guitarists Jogeir Daae Mæland and Florian Döderlein Winter and drummer Oskar Johnsen Rydh – went back to the outlook of that first 2017 EP, “Beneath The Breaking Waves”, when they were still trying to find a foothold and stepping into the unknown, in order to stay true to themselves.

“It’s extremely important to remember the first time we created those songs,” says Katrine. “There was no expectation, and we just did it for ourselves. I need to make music for my own healing and expression and I’m so glad that we managed to find a way back to that mindset, and it’s absolutely crucial if you are going to continue and make music on your own terms. You need to be able to access that perspective of everything is allowed, no ideas are dumb and develop them as you go.”

“It’s the nature of creativity in that have to challenge yourself,” adds Jogeir, “and that is a state of restlessness in itself. It’s a hard balance to not let the inner critic become too strong, but not to silence it either, because you need it to grow. If you can manage to look at yourself and your issues without judgment and just curiosity it becomes much easier to bear.”

It’s that process of healing and working through, that willingness to face life’s storms in order to be released from them that’s given Kalandra such a close connection with their fans, and given many a means to deal with their own struggles. They’ve had feedback from health professionals who have used their music for therapy, and even used with psychedelics to help people overcome addiction and trauma. For Katrine and Jogeir, their own experiences of meditation, Eastern philosophy and psychoanalytic therapy all contributed to the process of writing “A Frame Of Mind”, and the far-sighted acceptance and perspective the album allows for itself, and for others.

Kalandra may still see themselves as outsiders, may still be persevering along a path that may be never fully mapped out, but theirs is the broadest, most challenging of ventures with the richest of rewards, and one whose sense of accommodation feels equally boundless.

Tracklist

1. I Am (05:32)

2. Untie The Knot (03:52)

3. Are You Ready? (04:31)

4. The State of the World (04:18)

5. Bardaginn (05:33)

6. A Life Worth Living (04:13)

7. I’ll Get There One Day (06:25)

8. Hytta (04:24)

9. Segla (04:58)

10. I Remember A Time (04:20)

Text: Jonathan Selzer