What does Fuimadane sound like?

A mystical witches’ cauldron of dark ambient, Nordic folk and electronica with worldly influences.

The review of ‘Heljar Gátt’ by Fuimadane

Danish composer and performer Jon Krasheninnikoff Skarin is the mastermind behind Fuimadane. I stumbled across his work at the end of 2023 and found his style of dark ambient to be bewitching and entrancing. Jon keeps European folk and Nordic folk at the centre of his work but each album is designed to take you somewhere new, or to a different experience. For his new 2025 album ‘Heljar Gátt’ we seem to be in the icy mountains at the mouth of a volcano.

This translates to an album that is full of Scandinavian fiddle and drone instrumentation but that takes a back seat to the percussive nature of the drums and vocals. After the mixture of synths, digeridoos, flutes and dark tones of ‘Ulfberht’, the Norse Viking drums kick into full attack with ‘Drums of Hel’. Working as a pair of songs with the cinematic ‘Hefja blot’, the drums crash and smash their way like mountain rocks and industrial metal axes clashing at war. Alongside this throat singers make percussive breathing rhythms and other voices are electronically distorted into reedy throat machines. I’m not sure what is and isn’t real but I feel like we’re in deep Inuit territory marching through the elements to the mouth of a volcano.

After two attacking tracks, things move towards a marching groove with ‘Ragnarökr’. When the throat singing and biking horns aren’t raging at you through whisper or rousing stabs, the hand percussion dances a delicate dance through forest field recordings and tagleharpa. It signals a transition to a mystical, more ethereal section of the album. ‘Den skæve hedning’ is all about acoustic stringed instruments. They weave a serpentine coil that’s part dream, part sinister. Gliding over the first two-thirds of the track is a disembodied female “ooh” that’s replaced by a Viking choir for the finale. If Lord of the Rings did Spanish mountain songs, this would be it. It doesn’t stay ethereal for long as ‘Síðasta afstaða’ uses throat singing and choir samples to create a deliciously dark machine of mouths. I feel like I’m in a dark, cold mine smashing through walls to escape.

Fuimadane takes instruments from all around the world. Whilst a lot of this album relies on throat singing and big drums, it is the Viking choirs and unusual fiddles that take centre stage for ‘Hamstola’. This six-minute epic is huge in scale. Jon has a way of making his bass resonate and shake your bones. That can be through either synths, voice or strings – and often it’s all three. Things take a more electronic route with ‘Hugr’ with pizzicato string samples daintily painting a melody for a would-be trance track to jump in. Instead, the synths and Arabic wind instruments hum and buzz waiting to be let loose in a taut bow never fired.

Whilst Fuimadane doesn’t break into dance music, ‘Veizla’ brings a fireside dance to the album. Groove-laden guitar riffs, shouty chants and market chatter surround the hand percussion piece. Where Catalan and Denmark cross, ‘Veizla’ is having dinner. It is the prelude for ‘Electric Winter Solstice’, a Viking barn dance jig. Borrowing from English folk tropes, this track uses instruments from different European sectors to create a global bard of sorts. Fuimadane’s sampling use is spot on here as I feel like the musical culture is global and nowhere simultaneously.

With the upbeat tracks completed, utter percussive chaos takes over for the cinematic title track. ‘Heljar Gátt’ has more in common with a sci-fi thriller soundtrack than what’s come before. Rumbling orchestral tom drums, thick buzzsaw synths, taut pulsating synth runs and hacksawed strings blast the listener. We’ve crossed from hedonism to sacrifice and danger as the gates of hell open up. This could score a God of War boss battle. ‘A Huldra’s Lullaby’ could also score a boss battle but from a completely different perspective. Where ‘Hugr’ earlier hinted at trance beats, this track goes full in. Expect filtered vocal snippets, dissonant bleeps, washed-out icy synths and a hard-hitting trance beat. Taking a game soundtrack for reference, it reminds me of ‘Zone of the Enders’. It has a cinematic orchestral anime feel to it.

After all that, the album closes with a waltzing ballad called ‘Dans i C Dur’. A synth harp and violin play us out like an epilogue closing a unique and varied album. Fuimadane always delivers something interesting and visceral and he does so again with ‘Heljar Gátt’. Some samples, like the percussion, sound so true to life that they feel dynamic and alive. A few of the string and harp samples sound at times a bit flatter. It is when Fuimadane decides to not play these instruments traditionally and arranges them in his own weird and wonderful ways that the true alchemy of his sound comes alive. This album is full of that magic so it is a great place to start if you’d like to dip into his world.

Recommended track: Ragnarökr

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