So it comes as quite a surprise, as early as the second track, to find ourselves in a quite different sound world. "The Clock Is Ticking" is another original, this time a song delivered by Lien in English. It has a gentle bluesy gospel feel with harmonica and slide guitar predominating instrumentally, both provided by Knut Reiersrud. The Hardanger fiddle isn't heard until it takes the instrumental break, but it then suffers from being rather crowded out by the other things going on, an ominous indicator of what is to come.

Having recorded her first album for Heilo in 1988 while still a teenager and making a number of TV appearances, Annbjørg Lien became a household name in Norway and went on to receive international recognition, performing at the closing ceremony of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics in 1994 with the trio Bukkene Bruse. From early in her career, Lien has been something of a maverick on the Norwegian folk scene, emerging at a time when it was still relatively uncommon for a woman to make her name playing the Hardanger fiddle. She challenged a number of assumptions she found herself up against and went on to collaborate with musicians from different fields, resisting the idea that traditional music should remain frozen in the past, and this remains her standpoint.

Janus comes out of a period of study leading to Lien's doctorate and in the sleeve notes she states that the album "captures the act of simultaneously looking backward and forward, evoking doorways which can symbolise endings and new beginnings in a musical exploration." The album does indeed open a number of different musical doors and despite being on the short side at a mere 37 minutes there's a range of good material here, but unfortunately this nevertheless turns out to be a rather unsatisfying, unresolved work. While suggesting various possibilities of a way forward there is no feeling of a clear direction and while Janus boasts fine supporting players with good pedigree in Norwegian music much of the time it feels unclear why they all need to be there. The Hardanger fiddle was traditionally played as a solo instrument and for a good reason, many of the subtleties of its rich sound being lost when mixed with other instruments. The instrument can certainly work in an ensemble setting, but here Lien's playing often feels constrained by what else is going on, not given the chance to really flourish.

A wish to explore the possibilities of the Hardanger fiddle is at the heart of this project and this is indicated in the sleeve notes with Lien including details of the particular fiddle tuning chosen for each piece, giving a different character to the music in each case. This might seem rather esoteric to the average listener but the point is pretty much lost anyway when there is so much else going on. "Strangled Stranger" is dedicated to the Setesdal fiddler Andres Rysstad and begins with a short snippet from an old recording of him speaking. The fiddle states the tune, then one by one everybody joins in. Too often, here and elsewhere, the arrangements have the effect of diluting the powerful edginess at the heart of the Setedal fiddle music tradition until it all begins to sound rather anodyne.

Next time it would be good to hear Annbjørg Lien come up with an album which focuses more on the fiddle, really showing how these new ideas have been distilled into her playing style. Janus feels like work in progress and a lot needs filtering out so that less can actually come to mean more.

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Photo: Stian Herdal