WOBBLER’S FRØISLIE TELLS FOUR STORIES
The Norwegian band’s keyboardist unveils his solo debut, Fire Fortellinger.
Wobbler keyboard player Lars Fredrik Frøislie spent much of the pandemic tinkering with the array of instruments he keeps in the basement of his house in Oslo. “For a lot of the time, my family had to endure the noise that was coming up from there,” he tells Prog, apologetically.
The outcome of these explorations is Frøislie’s debut solo album, Fire Fortellinger (‘Four Stories’). Released by Karisma on June 2, it’s inspired by Norse myth, history and nature, the album is a quartet of evocative, keyboard-centred songs, each telling a different tale.
“The song Rytter Av Dommedag is based on the legend of King Rakne,” says Frøislie, “who is supposedly buried in the largest burial mound in Northern Europe, surrounded by two white horses and treasure. I mixed in the riders of the apocalypse and a few other things, almost like a Marvel action movie. It’s basically a fairytale mish-mash.”
Jaertegn relates the tale of travellers doomed to wander eternally in a gloomy forest, while Et Sted Under Himmelhvelvet draws on the influence of Renaissance-era Florence. The 17-minute Naturens Katedral is inspired by harsh winters in the mountains near a “primitive” cottage Frøislie and his family own in the wilds of Norway.
There’s a definite sense that his mind is anywhere other than the 21st century on Fire Fortellinger. “During the pandemic, I was only listening to Renaissance music and reading books from centuries ago,” he says. “I was almost living in my head a thousand years.”
This is a solo album in the truest sense. Elephant9’s Nikolai Haengsle plays bass on all four tracks, but Frøislie took care of everything else – keyboards, drums, vocals, and even the album cover (inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s 16th-century painting, The Seven Deadly Sins).
The lyrics are all in Norwegian, but this shouldn’t put off anyone who doesn’t speak the language. “Not understanding is a bonus,” says Frøislie. “It lets people’s imagination do some work. When I listen to Italian prog, I prefer to hear them sing in their own language instead of badly pronounced English.”
There are no plans to play any solo shows in support of the album, but Frøislie isn’t ruling out a follow-up to
Fire Fortellinger.“We’re preparing the new Wobbler album,” he reveals, “but hopefully there’ll be another solo album sometime in the future.”
“The opening song’s like a Marvel movie, it’s basically a fairytale mish-mash.”
See www.bit.ly/wobblerlars for more on Frøislie and the album.