...a couple of hurdy-gurdy-toting Swedes proceed to blow my little mind! These guys are Stefan Brisland-Ferner and Hallbus Totte Mattsson, playing at the Nordic Roots Festival here in Minneapolis at the Cedar Cultural Center. The mind begins to reel when you first see their instruments, which look like something devised as props for a Star Wars cocktail lounge scene, and cranks (literally) into a new dimention when they start to play. I will lamely describe the sounds they make as mysterious sitar drone symphonies punctuated by angry-Nordic-god insect storm melodies. These two further trip things out by jamming their fingers into the guts of their instruments and fiddling around with who-knows-what to produce various caterwauling screams and yowls, intermittently feeding their signals through electronic processors, and laying the whole mix on top of pulsing synthesized rhythm tracks to really take the music to hypnotic places. I find myself imagining belly dancing valkyries! Yow! If you'd like to go on your own little sonic adventure, buy their CD, Hurdy-Gurdy PROTOTYP at: www.noside.com