Adjágas: 2007's first great album

Hold onto those HMV gift tokens, 2007's first great album is out on the 8th January....

Most aspiring musicians will hail from a locale sufficiently recognisable by its culture, its trade and its geography. Even bands from dormant sleepy towns in Britain and the States will have some familiar landmarks to register with people’s grey matter. Lawra Somby, one half of evocative traditionalists Adjágas, is rather different. Sitting in the bar of the infamous Columbia Hotel in west London, Somby is carefully outlining the rituals and beliefs of his native Sami tribes.

Apparently, this ancient nomadic people number about 60, 000 and reside mostly in a territory called Sámpi. Asked to locate this on a map and Somby says it’s at the very northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, spreading into Russia. “Except over the years we have been colonised by these different countries,” says Somby in a lullaby bur that’s just about audible. “We have since tried to hold onto our culture, but it’s slowly been eroded. The main way of living is through herding reindeers, hunting and gathering. In Norwegian schools, it was illegal to speak Sami”.

Perhaps as an act of defiance, and possibly because it sounds good, Sambi and cohort Sara Mariella Gaup sing in their native Sami language. And judging by their forthcoming eponymous debut album, it is the most sweetly musical language. At times the aural equivalent of somersaulting gymnastics, Somby and Mariella Gaup whoop, holler and yodel in unison and apart. In theory, it could be a pile-up of disharmony and disaggregated shrieks. In practise it’s beautifully symmetrical and giddily circular, all pirouetting vocal turns and bird-like chirps. It’s singularly enchanting and otherworldly, but anchored in recognisable heart and soul language. Somby simply says “it’s the Sami way of singing”.

Nevertheless, for all its primitive cultural leanings, there’s nothing impenetrable and alien about Adjágas’ music either. Furnished by pin-sharp mandolins and Glockenspiels, rolling pianos and reverb guitars, Adjágas are spiritual heirs to The Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions album, Low and long forgotten 4AD folkies, La Mystere Des Voix Bulgares. The major difference, though, is that there’s far more joy and goggle-eyed wonderment here than anything austere and threadbare. In fact, songs such as Dolgemáŧki and Ozan simply flow with enviable, dextrous melody. It seems Adjágas are hardly dour and worthy ‘world music’ types after all.

“We do listen to a lot of west European music,” says Somby, “I used to live in Oslo, so came across Sigor Ros, Cocteau Twins – we’ve absorbed a fair amount of what’s outside our traditions”.

Somby first met Sara Mariella Gaup whilst the pair were still at school. It was on a trip to Russia that they started singing together. “A couple of years later we bumped into each other,” says Somby, “and we decided to try and develop what we started. To our surprise it fell into place with little effort. We wrote our first song in September 2004 and a year later we recorded the album”.

According to Somby, Sara has been singing since she was a child and performed on stage since the age of 12. It also helped that her father, Ańde, is a musician and passed on his considerable skills. Needless to say, their Sami roots do play a huge part, too. Their songwriting approach is based on the Sami concept of the ‘yoik’, which attempts to describe ideas and stories with sounds rather than words. It is abstract, unstructured and open to interpretations – and actually comes to a person, sometimes in the half-conscious state prior to waking up.

“Our name actually means ‘dream state’ in Sami,” he says, “and a yoik is something that everyone carries around with them. They are the equivalent to stories but in instrumental folk music. In Sami, people can be identified by their yoik and be interpreted accordingly.”

In Norway, Adjágas’ album has inevitably led to curiosity regarding this ancient tribe. For Somby, this is an opportunity, not a threat. “Yes, we were stunned by the media’s attention,” he says, grinning, “but we’re not expecting influxes of tourists just yet. For us, it’s simply a good way we can tell our stories”.

Adjágas is released on Ever Records on 8th January