Une Meeles (2016)
12 tracks, 39 minutes
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The whole charm of Maarja Nuut’s music in the atmospheres. Une Meeles is almost completely solo: just her fiddle and voice which are looped and electronically altered to create amazing, spine-tingling sonics (the only exceptions are a sample of an Estonian soundscape and one fiddle duet). Her music is heavily informed by her deep studies into the folk music of Estonia, which she uses to create her own compositions. Each piece is carefully and intricately constructed, and the whole way, it is the atmosphere that is at the centre of the sound. It’s chilly, ethereal and sparkly; arboreal; sometimes spooky; it’s misty and mystical and magical. The whole thing rings clear like a glass bell. Above all, it’s very, very beautiful.
When I was making notes listening to this album, I ended up pinpointing almost every track as especially beautiful, but of course they all are, for so many reasons. In ‘Hobusemäng’, the second track on the album, after one-and-a-half pieces all in the standard fiddle range, she suddenly brings in an octave peddle, lurching one of her loops down to the pitch of a double bass, it’s so unexpected and exciting; ‘Ödangule’ is a fully a cappella piece based on several stunning vocal loops; ‘Siidisulis Linnukene’ has echoes of Scottish fiddle, ‘Kiik Tahab Kindaid’ echoes of Albanian and maybe North Indian music… A long and beautiful poem could be written about each piece on this album. There is also quite a naivety to a lot of Nuut’s songs, some of which sound quite like nursery rhymes (although they usually descend into something vaguely unsettling). With so much drawn from Estonian folk traditions, I wonder how much inspiration comes directly from children’s songs, or whether I only think that because of some coincidental (or extremely ancient) similarity to British children’s songs.
It was hard to choose between this album and Nuut’s first, Soolo from 2013 (which I very much urge you to check out too). I think that’s a tough decision for me because whenever I’m in the mood for it, I usually just play them back-to-back. That’s intentional, too: while this one feel a little less ‘traditional’ than the first, Nuut’s own description notes that the material on this album ‘directly builds off of motifs from her previous album.’
I feel like I could wax lyrical and muse poetical about Maarja Nuut’s work for days. This is music that is really intriguing to listen deeply and with much thought, but it’s perhaps even more satisfying to listen to with no thought at all, with a blank mind ready to be filled with the mysterious waves of Nuut’s hundred fiddles and thousand voices, and taken to an alternate plane of Estonian mythology and mysticism.
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