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Lars Fredrik Frøislie — Gamle Mester
(Karisma KAR296, 2025, CD / LP / DL)

Lars Fredrik Frøislie — Quattro Racconti
(Karisma KAR301, 2025, CD / LP / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-10-19

Gamle Mester Cover artQuattro Racconti Cover art

Lars Fredrik Frøislie’s first solo album, Fire Fortellinger, was a triumph of progressive rock released in 2023, and 2025 sees the keyboard wizard coming out with two new albums. Or more properly one and a half new albums, since Quattro Racconti is a new version of Fire Fortellinger with Italian vocals by Lupo Galifi of Museo Rosenbach. I don’t have anything to add about it from my earlier review save to say that Frøislie’s love of classic Italian prog is brought to life in a very satisfying manner by the master singer, and Quattro Racconti could easily be a lost Italian album from the 70s. A really good one, too.

But earlier this year, Frøislie released his actual second solo album, Gamle Mester (Old Master, named after a famous oak tree near Krødsherad in Norway). Once again, the only other musician involved is bassist Nikolai Hængsle, and once again it’s a fine example of old-school progressive rock. My primary thought on listening to it is that Frøislie is a master at making music in an old style but doing it so well that there’s no thought of faulting him for following a well-trod path. You don’t fault Wagner for writing symphonies just because Beethoven wrote some before him. (And I don’t want to quibble about individual writing styles or sizes of orchestras — those can be regarded as equivalent to whether progressive rock bands use guitars or not, and how much they favor dissonance over harmony.) Gamle Mester is full of big organ sounds, harpsichord, piano, Mellotron, and analog synthesizers, all backed by a muscular Squire-like bass and solid drumming, and the compositions are intelligent and full of contacts. The lyrics are in Norwegian, and Frøislie is a fine singer. Really, progressive rock doesn’t get much better than this, as followers of the genre likely already aware; for non-fans who are prog-curious, this is an excellent place to start.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Lars Fredrik Frøislie

More info
http://larsfredrikfroislie.bandcamp.com/album/gamle-mester

 

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