Friday, April 6, 2012

Sorten Muld
"Ravnen"

Uh, oh! You either don't have the Flash plug-in installed, or you have it disabled.
Otherwise, there'd be a cute lil' streaming audio player on the left, rather than this message.

Another Wayside Music discovery! I assure you that posting two in a row was not intentional, however.

Denmark's Sorten Muld are one of a number of Scandinavian groups to mix traditional folk melodies with elements of electronica, dance music, etc. They were not the first, as the two others I know, Garmarna and Hedningarna (both Swedish), had releases out earlier. Regardless, though, they are my favorite of the tiny genre.

Their first release, the eponymous Sorten Muld, was pretty much entirely re-recorded as Mark II, their second release. Why? Perhaps because Sorten Muld was released in an edition of only 1,500 copies? Maybe they thought they could do better if they redid the songs? Maybe they were held at gunpoint by an insane person who made them redo it? I have no idea.

Today's jukebox selection is the Sorten Muld version of Ravnen. It was the lead-off track on the CD, yet was relegated to track six status on Mark II.

The Mark II version was also released as a CD single with three different mixes:

  1. Ravnen 444 4:44
  2. Ravnen nat mix 9:27
  3. Ravnen album version 6:48

Nat is Danish for night, in case you were wondering. The nat mix is pretty cool, and I almost used it for today's song, but it's not as immediate as this version. You'll note the song time is 6:48 on the album version, but the album lists the track is being 6:50. Curiouser and curiouser . . . or not.

No biased opinions . . . yet