Nordic experimentalist Fågelle returns with a record whose backdrop is the inland of Halland, a patchwork of forests and abandoned mills in southern Sweden – her most personal opus yet. After years in Berlin and Gothenburg, Fågelle returned home — not out of nostalgia, but as an act of reclamation. She wanted to reconnect with the soil that shaped her and let something new grow from what had been left behind. Bränn min jord (“Burn my soil”) grew from this process of renewal. Its title references the tradition of burning the ground to spark new life — a metaphor for the personal upheaval and rebuilding at the heart of the record. The music explores the tension of growing up somewhere you know you’ll have to leave, yet which keeps pulling you back. It speaks about identity, memory, and the hidden emotional landscapes of overlooked places.
Fågelle worked with local musicians, dancers, and communities to bring the region into the recordings. She captured dancer Nathalie Ruiz moving across forest floors and wooden stages; collaborated with Våxtorp and Sennan Brass Orchestra; and recorded Stefan Isebring’s self-built hurdy-gurdy and Lars Bylund’s singing and screaming. She also created a 24-hour “sound time capsule” in the communal hall of her small high school town, inviting locals to drop in and leave sonic traces in the record, and worked with EDM producer Samuel Reitmaier and local teenagers to capture the sounds of passing EPA cars, a uniquely Swedish rural subculture. Instrumental sessions took place at Folkhemmet, a forest studio in Unnaryd, with Petter Eriksson and drummer Liam Amner (Hey Elbow, Alice Boman).
Sonically, Bränn min jord blends organic and industrial textures — distorted guitars, brass, field recordings, and unguarded vocals. Atmospheric yet physical, it shifts between light and shadow, desolation and tenderness. By integrating local musicians, dancers, and even the ambient life of small towns into the recordings, Bränn min jord reimagines how music can reflect and reshape the landscape it comes from and bridge the gap between folk tradition and contemporary sonic art. Though rooted in Halland, the record reaches beyond, asking how places shape us, how memory lives in the land, and how returning — even when wrenching — can be a way of fully coming home.
Rising from under the forest floor, “Innan malen hittat in” is an adventure into the beating heart of the Swedish inland where she grew up. It whispers and hollers with Swedish folk bleakness where energy bursts collide with lyrical passages. It’s dirty, precarious, on the verge of chaos—barely holding together like a machine on its last leg. Through the song, Fågelle narrates memories of growing up and feelings of belonging and alienation. The chorus becomes a vow, made to herself and to the place: “before the moths get in, before the sun gets here, it’s my place”. The track was recorded together with local artists and musicians, drawing sound directly from physical movement and place: dancer Nathalie Ruiz dragging chains and metal scraps over the floor of the Torup community hall, Stefan Isebring’s self-built hurdy-gurdy, and Liam Amner’s hypnotic drumming. The song was mixed by Petter Eriksson and mastered by Kristofer Göransson.
Bränn min jord will be released on February 27th. Pre-orders are now available here.
Photo credit: Lars Bylund
