Trold "Once Upon A Time..." Apoxina Records 2003 (APOXCD2)
1. Slice Of Pizza
2. So Many Tables
3. Practical Joke
4. ...So Below
5. Space Attack!!!
6. Missing Link
7. Tail Of Huldra
8. Nanocosmos
Hailing from Stavanger, a city on the west coast of Norway more famous for its boiling oil industry than for anything even remotely resembling a thriving psytrance scene, Trold are one of the very few Norwegian acts that produce this kind of music. (You might have noticed that their webpage is hosted by yours truly trance.net, too). Formed in 1999 as a trio, Trold now only comprises Bjørn Opheim and Stein Skjoldal, as third member Leif Askeland has left the group (although he participates on one of the tracks here). Trold are actually the second Norwegian psytrance act ever to release an album, Christer Borge Lunde's project Ra being the first, and it's the recently established French label Apoxina that unleashes Trold's music upon the world.
Both their project name, the album title and the sleeve – which I must admit I find slightly tacky, although amusing – reveal Trold's fascination for Norwegian folklore à la Asbjørnsen & Moe (the Norwegian equivalent to the Grimm Brothers), the mystique of the forests and the fable creatures that populate them providing a rather different imagery from most their genre-mates. This inspiration is not very evident in the music, though, which is quite traditional psytrance. But although this album certainly doesn't provide anything earth-shatteringly new, it still contains some good tunes. However, it also has some typical "debut album" flaws: some of the music comes across as a little derivative and dated, and the album is marred by some shoddy production details and a a somewhat inferior sound quality. (It must be noted that I only have a burnt copy courtesy of Trold themselves, and this might be an unmastered version – I didn't ask). As for the overall sound, the kicks and basslines here are certainly not as dominating as on yer average psytrance production these days. And although I'm all for music that doesn't rely entirely on firing on all cylinders, and provide less one-dimensional dynamics, parts of this album come across as a little tame, and would have benefited from a beefier sound. Some of the pads and string sounds are too flat and simplistic ("Tail of Huldra" in particular), and that voice sample in "Practical Joke"... ahem.
So, what about the music? Well, Trold have at least one foot in the "morning trance"/old school camp, with a lot of riffage, melodies and atmosphere going on in most of the tracks, although there's plenty of the warped sound tweaking and effects of latter-day psytrance here as well (almost Hux Flux-ish at times, although less mental). The material on offer ranges from some quite minimal-oriented tracks (placed at the beginning, for some reason) to more riff-based assaults with melodies all over the place. Some of the less melodic cuts strike me as a bit uninvolving and ordinary, although the opener "Slice Of Pizza" is actually one of the best tracks. In general, though, Trold are at their best when their old school leanings and melodic sense come to the fore, and tracks such as "...So Below" and "Space Attack!!!" are probably the choice cuts for listeners who miss the merry old sound of the 90's, and they might also be of interest to fans of Serge Souqué's project The Antidote. OK, so it pales in comparison to something like Blue Planet Corporation's "Blue Planet" album, but then again, so does just about anything, and Trold come up with some useful material here. And although a lot of the tricks they have up their sleeve are of the cliched variety (voice samples harping on about space and "spirituality", guitar-ish synth sounds, the compulsory closing downbeat track), they often make them work quite well.
This isn't a starling or state-of-the-art album, rather a pretty old-fashioned record which I assume comprises material conceived over a long time span. Fans of morning trance and old school should definitely check it out, and although this record has a few shortcomings in the sound quality/production department and suffers from an uneven song material, it has a number of well-constructed tracks. A nice round-up of Trold's "story so far", "Once Upon A Time..." is a respectable, although unadventurous debut from a promising group. What they need to do now is to upgrade and mature their sound and show a willingness to see beyond the norm to develop a less formulaic signature.
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