Review & Track Premiere: Uffe Lorenzen, Triprapport
[Click play above to stream the premiere of Uffe Lorenzen’s ‘Psykonauten’ from the album Triprapport, out May 10 on Bad Afro Records.]
Is it really any surprise that Uffe Lorenzen would produce headphone-ready acid folk of the highest caliber? It probably shouldn’t be. The Baby Woodrose frontman, also known as Lorenzo Woodrose, has been proffering psychedelic garage and heavy rock with that outfit for the last 18 years, and his 2017 solo debut, Galmandsværk (review here), was a likewise-directed lysergic journey. Triprapport, recorded and mixed analog, is a more than worthy follow-up to that also-released-by-Bad–Afro first offering, with its eight songs written in a short period of time during a mushroom binge off in a cabin someplace in Lorenzen‘s native Denmark. The album’s title, Triprapport, might indeed be taken as a report about that trip, and of course, “trip” is the operative word. Across 36 occasionally-sitar-laced minutes Lorenzen builds layers of acoustic and electric guitar, percussion, and echoing vocals to a sensibility that is at once reminiscent of the debut and steadier in its approach.
The mellotron dream of “Angakkoq” and the subtly percussive, semi-spoken “Alting Er Eet” are both likewise assured, and even on the extra spacious “Aldrig Mere Ned,” in which Lorenzen‘s strumming seems to ring out like the Milky Way cutting the night sky in half amid a mounting wall of electrified fuzz, there’s a willfulness to the proceedings that speaks to the consciousness behind all that mind expansion. The narrative of the album’s construction — guy goes into the woods, eats mushrooms, writes songs — does precious little to convey the level of craft or detail that Lorenzen brings to his work, but perhaps it’s best left to the songs to explain themselves, as with the closing Hans Vinding (Furekåben) cover “Hallo Hallo Frøken,” taking the ’70s folk vibe and peppering it with drifting notes of effects-laced lap steel (provided by Peter Knudsen), or even the countdown-to-launch that happens about halfway into opener “Psykonauten” atop a engine ignition of low-end buzz. Lorenzen may not be a stranger to the forms in which he works, but his mastery thereof is what makes Triprapport a voyage worth undertaking.
The launch that ensues there in a scorching, multi-layered electric lead is about as appropriate a beginning point as Lorenzen could give Triprapport, and what follows is due otherworldliness both in that song and “Alting Er Eet,” which follows in linear fashion seemingly headed on a direct course toward “far out,” synth and delay guitar intertwining in dramatic fashion in the midpoint break before Lorenzen starts a call and response to his own melody and the synth swells again. The title-track is indicative of some of the more garage-feeling rhythms Triprapport has on offer. “Alting Er Eet” and “Psykonauten” both certainly have movement — the opener punctuated by tambourine, the second track by a bass drum/snare and the aforementioned shaker — but the tablas and tambourine of “Triprapport” as well as the pinging sitar notes that accompany (courtesy of Vicki Singh) add a sense of boogie that the later “Floden,” indeed with more sitar, answers later.
“Floden” is the shortest track on Triprapport at 3:17, but Lorenzen only hits the five-minute mark twice and one of those is for the finale cover. Still, “Floden”‘s relative surge of push is well-placed in side B as it follows the drift of “Angakkoq” and “Lille Fugl” with “Aldrig Mere Ned” and “Hallo Hallo Frøken” still to go. It’s a moment whereby Lorenzen directly engages the listener, especially in a linear format (CD, digital), allowing for some grounding factor following the acoustic-and-organ-and-flute (the latter contributed by Adam Dreisler) interplay of “Lille Fugl.” Both that track and “Angakkoq” before it have some percussive aspect, whether it’s the triangle of “Angakkoq” or what might be a bass drum so far back in the mix of “Lille Fugl” that it sounds like water droplets, but “Floden” is a well-placed cosmic burst of energy, that, without losing the melodic focus that proves so resonant throughout Triprapport, responds to the title-track’s classic psychedelia with more of the same as heard in its running measures between verse lines.
As the last original track, “Aldrig Er Eet” feels like a significant moment for Lorenzen as a songwriter, and it might be, with a somewhat moodier pulse, subtle backing line of synth or effects lower register and lower in the mix, as well as a march in acoustic guitar and percussion, but it’s not at all out of place with what comes before it or even what comes after, as “Hallo Hallo Frøken” is brought well into the character of the rest of Triprapport, the lap steel taking the place of the strings in the original and Lorenzen replacing the Dylan-gone-krautrock of the original with his own approach. Across the entire span of Triprapport — its manageable 36-minute run just about ideal for a traditional two-sided LP — the songs are a reminder of just how much character Lorenzen puts into his songwriting. It is, in the end, his work, and however traditional the form in which he’s working might be intended to be, there’s no doubting the progressive aspects of Triprapport even as relates to Galmandsværk.
That is perhaps something the gone-to-a-cabin storyline in which the album occurs takes as a given, but it’s worth highlighting all the same that Lorenzen is nothing short of a master when it comes to psychedelic composition. His work in Baby Woodrose speaks for itself, but can be somewhat opaque for a new listener to take on — in the age-old question of where to start, I’d say the self-titled, but there’s really no wrong answer — but even the fact that the lyrics are in Danish lends his solo material a more personal atmosphere, though I’ll readily admit to my ignorance of the language. Nonetheless, while Lorenzen may be exploring this more personal mode of songwriting, he doesn’t at all lose the writing part of that equation. The material on Triprapport is as deceptive in its efficiency as it is fluid in its front-to-back flow. Ultimately, this is what makes the album his own. Is it surprising? Probably not. But it’s gorgeous.
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Tags: Baby Woodrose, Bad Afro Records, Copenhagen, Denmark, Triprapport, Uffe Lorenzen, Uffe Lorenzen Triprapport
