Svalbard Pictures
After our whale and polar bear sightings we arrived at our destination for the morning, Gnålodden. It’s a rocky landing with a vertical wall covered with what seems like thousands of chattering geese. The geese weren’t the main attraction of this landing though. An arctic fox shuttling it’s pups from one den to another right in front of us was the photographic highlight of the day. This was a very rare sight and to see it up close was a treat. We were confused what the fox was carrying at first. Looking at the back of the LCD screen it looked like the fox was carrying a teddy bear.
Svalbard Pictures
Comparisons with Thomas Köner are bound to arise before you’ve even listened to Alan Morse Davies’ epic Svalbard. Based on the landscape of Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago – a land of midnight sun midway between the mainland and the North Pole – and split into 3 sections – ‘Land’, ‘Sky’, and ‘Sea’ – the similarities with Köner’s classic Nunatak/Teimo/Permafrost triptych are unavoidable. Upon first listen, too, whether you’ve chosen the full 3-hour version or the more palatable (but less rewarding) 45-minute ‘B’ edit, the echoes continue. I have listened to both versions of Svalbard and will base my review around the longer piece, which is the way Davies intends it to be heard.
Davies has admitted that the opening track, ‘Kvitøya’, started out as an unnamed experiment and was only titled when he stumbled across pictures of Svalbard on the internet. The images (a rudimentary search will probably present you with the exact same) seemed to match his piece so well that he decided to keep going and make more music based around what he could unearth on the archipelago. Kvitøya itself is a daunting, unpopulated rock covered almost totally by an ice-cap that has, in the past, laid claim to the lives of unfortunate explorers, and Davies’ music does indeed work to evoke its creaking mass and echoing emptiness. Despite its half-hour length ‘Kvitøya’ remains fairly steady throughout, its deep, echoing drone conjures the ice-cap’s dreadful allure and the overwhelming power of nature. The deepest tones groan and rumble in the speakers like slowly melting chunks of ice ready to crash into the sea.
The overriding themes are scale, awe and desolation. The extended running times of some of these pieces (the closing track, ‘Grønlandshavet’, clocks in at 45 minutes and there are several others that hit 10 and 20) work in such a way as to leave the listener with the unnerving feeling of having gotten lost in a beautiful but dangerous world. There are ghostly vocal sections, such as ‘Sørkappøya’ (a tiny island at the south of Spitsbergen), that are not dissimilar to those Lisa Gerrard contributed to the Gladiator and The Insider soundtracks. These fall into the ‘Sky’ section so one cannot help but imagine Aurora Borealis, surely one of the most gorgeous phenomena it’s possible for a human being to see but one which has, over the centuries, been so open to magical conjecture as to retain much of its mythical majesty in the present day. Many people, for example, claim to hear mysterious sounds when viewing the Northern Lights and their source is still open to debate. The Inuit believe they are spirits attempting to communicate with earth and it is this kind of folklore that ‘Sørkappøya’ and its fellow ‘Sky’ pieces bring to mind for me as they ebb, flow and drift like the lights themselves.
The album’s shorter pieces (there are a few around the 5 to 7 minute mark) are of no less importance to the overall feel of the record. Their relatively brief running times do offer up some kind of relief (although nothing really gets quite as dark as ‘Kvitøya’) and concentrate on places like Halvmåneøya which, whilst not habitable by humans, are seething nature reserves full of birds and other wildlife. They are lighter in tone and equally bewitching, but mainly without the fearful undercurrents that run through some of the longer pieces.
The album closes with ‘Sea’, which comprises of one track only – the massive ‘Grønlandshavet’ (or ‘Greenland Sea’). Greenland Sea is the area of water that stretches between Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland and eventually connects to the Arctic Ocean in the north, and the music Davies has dedicated to it fits to perfection. I was surprised by the serenity of ‘Grønlandshavet’ when I first listened to it, expecting a treacherous expedition across iceberg-littered and freezing waters with unpredictable currents, but when I read up on it I learned that the Greenland Sea is in fact inaccessible for the most part of the year for those very reasons. Boats are only able to use the water to any substantial extent for two months of the year, so instead ‘Grønlandshavet’ focuses on the sea as a wide open, peaceful expanse. It is arguably as untouched an area as any in the world, so polar bears, seals, deer, whales and millions of smaller ocean creatures have been able to establish a relatively healthy ecosystem. Davies approaches it as if from above, so we can look down from the sky with the spirits alongside us (the spectral voices appear here too) and take in the entirety of the Svalbard archipelago and its surrounding seas in all its glorious majesty. As a closing piece of music, ‘Grønlandshavet’ drifts like an ice floe in the wilderness – enormous but serene – and sums up Svalbard perfectly. What Alan Morse Davies has created here functions as an awe-struck appreciation, a stunning evocation and also a warning. Svalbard (as a place and a work of art) deserves your utmost respect.
8/10
At Sea (Full Version)
The Centrifuge (Abridged Version)
We will get close to the Svalbard nature with a boat like this. We can go places bigger boats never can go and hopefully this will be a fantastic wilderness journey. I have been in these areas before and I will build this trips on experiences from trips I have done. The skipper and owner of the sailboat is very experienced from sailing in the Arctic areas. He is known to be one of the best. The boat is certified to sail in high Arctic areas.
This winter I’m educating myself as a Svalbard guide, and will do several other photo trips to Svalbard during winter and summer. If you are interested you can send me an email about joining me on a similar trip in 2013. It is under planning, the dates are not decided until later this autumn. Please ask for prices.
More pictures and information about the trip will be presented later this autumn. A couple of pictures of the boat are presented here.
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