Dutch dark folk artist Kati Rán unveil new single »Kólga | 16« taken from the forthcoming album »Sála«

Dutch dark folk artist Kati Rán has unveiled the second single »Kólga | 16« taken from her forthcoming album, »Sála«, due out on May 24th, 2024 via Svart Records.

Kati Rán comments: “I’m glad to reveal »Kólga | 16« to the world today. A song with a lot of personal heart put into it. Its words had been carved long before it found its final melodic shape or “voice”.
When we were working on new Ianai songs together, I recorded nyckelharpa to the original song »16« that Jaani Peuhu wrote on a winternight, and unknowingly to us then, a home was formed for the final form of »Kólga | 16« by the hands of Fate and the exchange of our talents.
The cold grip of Kólga touches upon sacrifices, the death sleep, abandonment and ostracism, aswell as heavily needed, but sometimes destructive cataclysts for change, or new clarity by the forces of nature.”

Courtesy of Svart Records:

Dutch artist and Nordic folk pioneer Kati Rán presents the second single »Kólga | 16« for the 2024 release of her long awaited 13 track full length album »Sála«. The new track features Gaahl on guest vocals and is presented with beautiful lyric video by Costin Chioreanu.

“»Kólga | 16« is one of the coldest waves of the nine billowmaidens of Rán, one that can take your breathe away in a overpowering chokehold of ice water. What we deem the most ‘destructive of powerful forces of nature’ are aswell a necessary and powerful catalyst for change, or gain newfound clarity.” Kati Rán portrays. “»Kólga | 16« aswell touches upon many female figures that in one way or the other made significant sacrifices in their lives, have been sacrificed, betrayed, persecuted or deliberately put in another light in history, in mythology and various folktales across time and culture.” Kati continues.

Pre-order / pre-save »Sála«: orcd.co/katiransala
Stream »Kólga | 16«: orcd.co/katirankolga16

Photo by Ruben Terlouw

Svart Records are proud to release the long-awaited full length album »Sála« by Kati Rán in May 2024:

If the most profound treasures are often the most deeply buried, the journey to uncover them is vital process of discovery. Five years after the 15-minute single »Blodbylgje« signaled the birth of a new, more primordial, and immersive vision after the dissolution of her band L.E.A.F., Nordic dark folk artist Kati Rán has expanded on its oceanic theme for her long-awaited full-length album, »Sála«. Embarking on a far-reaching musical and personal travelogue, it’s a reawakening of both the feminine narratives submerged and fragmented within Norse mythology, and the enduring, healing powers held within.

Named after the Old Norse word for ‘soul’ and ‘sea’, »Sála« is an act of ‘soul retrieval’, the shamanic art of trauma recovery, be it illness, death, heartbreak or loss, and the reintegration of a splintered self. Across its 13, wide-ranging, elegantly unfolding tracks, the album is an embodiment of different feminine voices and perspectives – from the Norse nine daughters of the sea, or ‘billow maidens’, through various historical and fictional figures to the late-night voices we hear in our most liminal states – all with tales to tell, riddles to solve, challenges to be accepted and guidance to offer. It’s a multiplicity that, like the ocean itself, belongs to a vast, restless dynamic: a matrix of mysteries, unfathomable depths and ever-shifting currents, accumulating into an elemental, regenerative source of power.

Recorded in a barn in Húsafell, Iceland – home to glacier ice caves and a rare lava stone marimba rediscovered for the track »Stone Pillars« – as well as Finland, Norway and at home in Kati’s native Netherlands, »Sála« is as much chronicle of Kati’s own perspective-shifting recording process as it as a pilgrimage through different viewpoints and internal states. That itinerate urge is also reflected in the use of different languages, ranging across Norwegian, Old Norse, Icelandic, and, for the first time, English, her combination of ancient texts, historical reimagining’s and unguarded personal reflection backed up by deep research into the most resonant recesses of Nordic lore.

Spun throughout every thread of »Sála« is a sense of communion – with the power of stories to offer moral guidance and the thrill of the unknown; with the element of water, recreated across the album both in field recordings and the agelessly organic nature of the music itself; with the archetypes whose qualities we are called upon to embody at our most critical moments; and with the internal hidden realms forever whispering at us from the far edges of our consciousness.

Appropriately, it’s a collaborative venture too. As well as working closely together with Finnish producer Jaani Peuhu, there are contributions from across the musical spectrum, including extreme metal vocalist extraordinaire Gaahl, the Icelandic female choir Umbra Ensemble, renowned Norwegian jazz musician Karl Seglem, Björk and Brian Eno contrabassist Borgar Magnason, members of pagan folk acts Völuspá, Gealdýr, Heilung and Theodor Bastard and even Napalm Death’s Mitch Harris on vocals.

For all the many sources »Sála« draws from, the result is a singular, intimately transformative rite of passage, and a retuning of the heart to the reverent continuity of the sacred. It will take you from the opening title track’s chest-pounding rhythmic pulse emerging from a traditional Norwegian bukkehorn (recorded by Karl Seglem), a galloping horse-rider and Kati’s glacial, velveteen chant, through »Kólga«’s recounting of female persecution through the ages borne on the most gossamer-light yet unbreakable of timbres and »Stone Pillars« gently percolating, deep wells of abandonment and incantations to recovery. »Sála« closes with the track »Sátta« – Old Norse for ‘peace’ and ‘reconciliation’ – ending the album as it began with the bukkehorn, as it weaves rich drones and experience-stamped poems and prayers, Kati’s vocals the most sensitively tuned of emotional barometers. An album made in dedication, and in thrall to, its own sense of destiny, »Sála« is, as all quests must ultimately be, a homecoming.

Album introduction written by Jonathan Selzer.

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well

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