Nalle is the Glasgow based avant folk trio of visual artist Hanna Tuulikki, Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy. Nalle quickly gained attention in the UK as a band to watch . Hanna’s enthralling multioctave vocal range and singular delivery brought comparisons to other women vocalists who have explored the limits of the voice within traditional musical conventions but as the Wire noted, Nalle’s “clear individuality banishes lazy comparisons to others operative in this area of folk-inflected new music, like Lau Nau or Joanna Newsom.” Top this off with a fearless and accomplished integration of the musical traditions & instruments of the world’s people and you have the prescription for something that, in its very globally minded embrace , touches on the other worldly.

Their first album, By Chance Upon Waking - released in the UK in 2006 - was a relatively spontaneous, heartfelt affair, mostly recorded in Glasgow during two short bursts of activity, with the help of Daniel Padden (Volcano the Bear/The One Ensemble) - with a couple of additional tracks being born in solitude on a cold wintry night by the fire in Finland by Tuulikki.

The making of Nalle’s sophomore effort & locust debut, The Sirens Wave, couldn’t have been more different in conception & execution. Where Chance was literally left to spontaneity, Siren’s Wave is a dense & deliberate album of tightly woven song suites where few sounds and few silences, if any, are left unconsidered. Where Chance was cut in a matter of a few sessions, Siren’s became an obsession for the whole band & spanned the entirety of 2007 while the trio slowly took in the moods of the changing seasons as they passed by the window of John Cavanagh’s Glo-Spot studio where Nalle cut Siren’s Wave.

Nestled in the leafy suburbs of Glasgow, Cavanagh’s Glo-Spot is like a working history of recorded sound, housing everything from a turn of the 20th century Colombia graphophone cylinder phonograph to salvaged BBC microphones, Radford valve oscillators & Moog synths. Classic analog electronics at their disposal were integrated with the acoustic instrumentation that forms the backbone of the band (assorted strings, voices, woodwind, reed instruments) and the depth and range of the songs feel all the more intense, moody & spine tingling in part as a result of this magical audio alchemy.

The Sirens Wave is a deeply personal yet accessible album, enveloping themes of loss and grief, the springs of rebirth, and the harvest’s celebration. It is an album that grows a deeper and deeper bond with the willing listener.

Nalle will be touring the US in March.