Maarja Nuut: Une Meeles review – startling, atmospheric folk from Estonia

Maarja Nuut is a fiddle player and singer from Estonia who uses technology to rework Baltic folk styles to create impressively original, often edgy and unsettling songs and soundscapes. She mostly performs solo, helped by a producer and sound engineer who helps her to construct sound loops of her instrument and voice, matching repeated phrases against melody lines. It’s not a new technique, but the results are often startling. She plays both plucked and bowed fiddle, has a cool, intimate vocal style, and specialises in songs about dreams. A cappella vocal passages are matched against atmospheric, folk-influenced pieces, and a furious, tense song about dancing devils that is like a nightmare from some remote Estonian forest. There’s also a rousing improvised duet with another Estonian fiddler, Eeva Talsi, and the atmospheric Kargus, influenced by her collaborations with north African Tuareg musicians.