First single - AELVA - out today!
We’re releasing new music!! Our last release was in 2019 - the longest break we’ve taken since Afenginn began over two decades ago. But while it’s been quiet on the surface, we’ve been building underneath.
And today it begins. AELVA is the first single from Movements I - our eighth album, and the opening step in a long-form trilogy. In many ways it is the first movement. Exciting!
It’s a big day today! We’re releasing the first single from the upcoming Movements I album.
We haven’t put out any new music since the Klingra album in early 2019, so it’s exciting (and a little surreal) to finally begin sharing this new material that we’ve been working on for quite a while.
So here it starts.
The first single is called AELVA. It’s also the opening track on the actual album - and one of the first pieces I wrote when I started composing for Movements a few years ago.
Aelva opens with a choral-like theme, almost like a hymn. (Though in the single edit, that intro is left out, so you’ll have to wait for the album version to hear it.) But even if you don’t hear it, it’s there. The piece is built from that starting point - the quiet, floating hymn - which then settles into an 11/8 piano ostinato.
That C-minor, odd-meter pattern sat on my working board for a long time - years actually - while I circled around it, unsure how to shape it. Eventually I found a five-bar chord progression that wrapped around it like a kind of motherly care. I imagined the choral theme floating on top of this pearly stream - and for a while, that was the whole piece: a hymn-like melody suspended in its own harmonic and rhythmic dimension over the 11/8 stream.
I had a clear sense of what I wanted to create, though, but kept drifting away from finalising the form - until just before we started recording in February this year. I think I needed the ideas to mature, and honestly, it just took time to craft it right. When I finally sat down to finish it, it went pretty fast.
I wrote a cello/violin theme over the “motherly bed,” and began merging the choral theme into the ostinato - transforming the harmony of the hymn into a piano arpeggio that resembles the 11/8 figure. At the same time, the drumming (beautiful Ewe drums by Anders Hvidberg, blending with Ulrik’s groove) gradually shifts the feel from 11/8 into a kind of 4/4 halftime - the rhythmic space of the choral.
With the arpeggio, it became possible to let the harmony float and develop underneath until everything locks into a 4/4 presentation of the hymn, with straighter drums and solid bass giving it a grounded foundation.
Heðin did an amazing job putting it all together and making it sound like the album opener I dreamed of.
The single version of Aelva is out today on all platforms. We edited it quite a bit to mold it into something more bite-sized and suited for the single format: shorter, and in some ways more focused.
In one week, we’ll release another version - the Close-Up version - which is darker, heavier, and shows a different side of Aelva.
Hope you’ll enjoy it!
Put it on your playlists, download it, share it - and let it flow.
There’s much more to come in the months ahead.