The Nordic Trance of Hanna & Jerry’s ‘Relaxed’
It takes a refined touch to make the sitar sound native to the Scandinavian wilderness, but Hanna Östergren and Jerry Johansson have managed exactly that.
With ‘Relaxed,’ they are creating a marriage where the drone of a raga feels as natural as wind moving through spruce trees. Jerry Johansson has been digging into this specific soil for years. He was the mind of Grovjobb and has spent decades exploring the spiritual capabilities of the banjo and sitar. He approaches these instruments with the same open-ended curiosity as Sandy Bull, looking for the common ground between improvisation and traditional folk structures. Hanna Östergren comes at it from the outer limits. If you have followed the recent Swedish alt-scene, you know her work with Hills, Träden, or DJINN. She is comfortable in that space where repetition becomes texture, pushing rhythm until it induces a trance state.
On ‘Relaxed,’ out February 20 via Outerdisk, these two backgrounds converge. The music winds forward slowly, guided by raga structures but grounded in a heavy, northern atmosphere. It brings to mind the elusive, dreamlike quality of Charlie & Esdor or the early works of Joakim Skogsberg. Themes circle and overlap, shifting focus like a camera fading in and out of focus.
This is a record for the patient listener. Time and space don’t snap into place here… they dissolve. Distributed by Sound Effect Records, this is essential listening for anyone who likes their psychedelia stripped of pretense and rooted in something organic.
Outerdisk Website / Facebook / Instagram / YouTube / Bandcamp
Sound Effect Records Facebook / Instagram
