“It is important to stress that the joik itself, and certainly my version of it, is a matter of receiving an expression, and mediating the inner voice that a human experience has in itself. A strange fact is that sometimes the joik comes first, and then you realize to what feeling or experience the joik pertains afterwards." - Lawra Somby
Adjagas are a Norwegian duo, Sara Marielle Gaup and Lawra Somby. They are 'Sami joikers': people who make a weird 'yulk' type noise while they sing, and are from Sapmi, a cultural region which covers parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia.
Somehow, on its release in the early part of this year, it managed to turn heads, receiving glowing reviews in pretty mainstream publications (e.g. Q, The Sun, Time Out and the Metro).
Adjagas is Sami word for the state of mind somewhere between sleeping and waking; the ethereal vocal sounds flow like muttered dreams, like the peaks and troughs of soundwaves. A Joik is like a vocal flick with the back of the throat, a sort of spasm that sometimes goes unnoticed.
What seems to have captured people's attention is their less traditional approach to joiking; they use a more accessible backdrop and allow a small influx of electronic elements. Lawra says "We wanted to create new joiks, not just present traditional ones in a novel musical context." I hardly know any old yoiks, but Adjagas sound contemporary, not so stringently traditional as other 'famous' joikers like Mari Boine. (Stream a Knife remix of Boine here).
There is something entirely otherworldly about Adjagas that remains connected by small delicate threads to this dimension; the echoing strum of a banjo or an acoustic guitar and the subtle influx of modern electronics put it in context, where the vocals carry it away into distant snowy lands.
Adjagas are remarkably accessible, a beautiful soporific venture into something off the beaten track of the very American folk revival we're in the thick of.
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