Truth to say this release is quite unique. When I saw the packaging of "Tilbake Til Varmland", I thought that this album must be something interesting. Something uncommon and interesting. After starting to listen to this CD, my mood started to get lower a little, but anyways I was left with echoes of decent experimental music. Listening further, my opinion about this album became worse and worse while at the moment I can listen just to the first tracks in the album because the last ones just make me nervous. In turn about everything. Rød Stær is duo from Norway that was formed in 2008 and this CD is the first and only release. Cover of the album, as I've already said, looks nice. Thick booklet with photos of forests, random things and happenings and also several words about the album and some kind of motto of the band. Album starts with calm melody of reverbed guitar - "Mausoleum | Farvel D | Inn I Lysningen". The quality of recording isn't superb, but the same goes through the album so I guess that's more of idea and/or conception than lack of decent conditions, but of course I might be wrong. Dreamy melody of guitar is gradually covered with distant noises and the atmosphere distorts while at the end this track transforms into some kind of high-school-teenage-indie-rock-band-jam thing. "Tuareg | En Hær Er Her | Jeg Påkaller Sol" starts in slightly different and darker manner. Loops, something like effected hum, touches to guitar strings (I was thinking will the same jam start or not, but no). The track breaks in the middle. After some talked words more interesting and acceptable part of the song starts. Once again distant reverbed melodies, drones, some weird sounds to make atmosphere weirder, but all in all - not that bad. "Gress Opp Til Knærne | Farbror | Hestehavna (Til Henelie)" starts with monotonic composition of a few interchanging chords of guitar. After a couple of minutes avantgarde collage hops in, it sounds like rewinding of cassette or so and finally the track ends with monotonic, but even worse sounding song. "Klappesang | Caleb | Grusblirtilsti" - boring piano melody of three notes and some random sounds in the background that changes 3 times in the song. "Midtsommer | Pappa, Se Reven | Framme" - somewhat rhythmic, even gabber touches, but absolutely lo-fi, strange babbling and so on. And "Tuareg ("You Make Us Uncomfortable", Version By The Electrified Horses)" - the same fundamental sound as the beginning of the second track, but with talking, digital noise and so on. And yes, every track consists of three separate tracks (at least I think so because of the titles). And I can't imagine why they were joined into blocks.
For me this seems as a poor, very poor album. Apart from a couple of decent places, overall this album sounded like some modern, meaningless collage of sounds. It would surely fit in art galleries where some freaky hanging spoons or some wonderful scraps of newsletter are being shown as art. And it would surely fit in cafes where hipsters would gather. I couldn't find anything suitable for me.

Format: CD
Released: 2010
Label: Rogbiff Records