Áhkká

Antonio Poscic reviews Pauline Hogstrand's enchanting new album.

In countless spiritual traditions, mountains are seen as places of focused mysticism and power. For some, they are homes to gods and other divine creatures. For others, they are bridges to the sky and destinations of metaphysical pilgrimage. This insidious concept rings true across cultures and regions and even manages to find its way into the ever-ironic post-internet and post-digital simulacra. Today, it’s equally likely to take the form of surreal memes sourced from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain or William Shatner’s pompous monologue on free climbing. Recorded in 2021 using a variety of digital and analog instruments, Swedish-born, Copenhagen-based violist and composer Pauline Hogstrand’s Áhkká feels arcane in comparison to these contemporary manifestations of mountain-worship, offering instead a primordial, earthy sonic impression of a sacred alp.

Áhkká ("the old lady" in Lule Sámi) is a massif located in the Stora Sjöfallets (Stuor Muorkke) National Park in northern Sweden. The mountain’s imposing silhouette and sharp vertical rise dominate the barren plain that cradles it, while the sheer grandeur of the rock formation instills a sense of subliminal reverence and trepidation even when experienced through a photograph. It makes sense, then, that Hogstrand’s music is equally mysterious, impervious, and celestial, shaped into a series of droning, increasingly gripping textural expressions that convey a hidden narrative complexity despite their abstract makeup. But instead of observing the mountain from afar, Hogstrand places herself in the midst of a climb, while the mountain's inscrutable aura and Hogstrand's physical and psychological struggles become one.

Although press materials for the album frame the two 20-minute long pieces “Herein” and “Magnitude” as representing ascent and descent, respectively, the sensation across both cuts remains singular, representative of a unity of emotions – exuberance and despair, pleasure and pain, life and death – existing all at once. On “Herein”, we hear a series of percussive noises entangled with a growing golden shimmer. Here, the contrast between the breathless clunks and textures that buzz like an insect swarm gone mad produces an unnerving effect. But this sense of disquiet is ephemeral, as the timbres and slight rhythmic patterns morph again, flowing into a bagpipe-like crescendo. They pulse, revolve, and drone in a manner that’s eerily reminiscent of the avant folk of Ernest Bergez’s project Sourdure and his Massif Central-inspired miniatures despite ultimately sounding nothing like them.

Meanwhile, "Magnitude" opens with a circular series of somber hummings, akin to hearing a rush of blood overwhelm one's ears. Soon the sounds reconfigure and begin a sustained dance, becoming dense and voluminous before eventually rising to a bucolic plateau where an almost cathartic release of elation and ease concludes the journey. Throughout, Hogstrand's compositional touches reveal her violist nature. Textures vibrate and move like clouds of tremolo, spiccato, and martelé bowed strings, while synthetic noises allow her to expand these effects beyond the confines of acoustic instruments, making for an enchanting, transporting listen.