Erlend Viken enjoyed great success with his trio album “Frie Toyler” in 2014. Now, three years later, a year after winning first prize in the...

Erlend Viken enjoyed great success with his trio album “Frie Toyler” in 2014. Now, three years later, a year after winning first prize in the elite Category A in the National Contest for Traditional Music, Viken is returning with a new album and a new trio. The instrumentation is the same as before- fiddle, guitar and cello- but the music takes us to constantly new places. The wide-ranging experience these three musicians have from a number of different genres is clearly evident. On three of the tracks the group is augmented by drummer and percussionist Oyvind Skarbo. “Nykomlingen” emerges as yet another original album that is bursting with enthusiasm, interaction and musical inquisitiveness. Erlend wants all the musicians to have free rein in their approach to the music. “It’s important for me to have a certain amount of openness in the music, with space for variations and impulsive ideas, and I think we have managed to move out into more uncharted waters on this album. The tunes are more or less based on melodies on this album, too, but on several of them we have worked in a more fragmentary and improvisational way than before,” says Viken. Part of the material for this album is traditional music, hand-picked from sources in Norway, Sweden and North America. Viken also presents five freshly written tunes. He is an outstanding musical storyteller with a unique ability to write gripping and catchy tunes.