Last we heard from Nils Økland was a radical departure with the Hardanger fiddler’s Sonic Youth and Velvet Underground-inspired trio album Lumen Drones.

This latest record, a more stately folk and chamber-jazz flavoured five-piece affair, bristling with sax, harmonium, bass and drums, was recorded in a church near Lena in Norway in the summer of 2012, the title track dedicated to Økland’s late father and to his mother.

The music is largely the fiddle player’s arranged by the band (improvisational range is actually limited, the room for manoeuvre relatively constrained), that’s Rolf-Erik Nystrom on saxes, Sigbjørn Apeland harmonium, Mats Eilertsen double bass and Håkon Mørch Stene on percussion and vibes.

There’s an incantatory appeal to some of the dense chordal legato phrases on ‘Mali’ a kind of a mantra if it were sung. ‘Drev’ later is texturally richer the dirge-like atmosphere blossoming into something more open and appealing, the force of the band’s improvising imagination hitherto largely under wraps flickering and flowering.

A much more typical Okland album than what we heard on Lumen Drones, the strength and beauty of his musical personality driving the album, of course more of a good thing than anything else although the band is often overshadowed by the luminously ancient sounding fiddle among Økland’s choice of instruments.

Of as much appeal to those who listen a lot to classical music or traditional folk music from Norway, maybe even more so than jazz, pick for me is ‘Amstel’, Eilertsen breaking free, the lilting melody pristine in its rural loveliness.

Stephen Graham