A voice memo from Sálltoduottar

Last summer I carried around 25 to 30 kilos of gear into Saltfjellet/Sálltoduottar and stayed there alone for a weekend.

I spent about a week preparing and bought new microphones. I planned to record brooks, birds, wind and grass, then bring those sounds home and find out what they could become in the studio.

It was hot. Around 25 to 30 degrees, even at night.

I hardly slept.

Most of the weekend I was hot, tired and moving a heavy bag through the landscape. The photos look peaceful. I remember the heat and the weight just as clearly.

Field recording makes me pay attention to things I would otherwise walk past. I listen to how a brook changes when I move the microphone, or how the wind catches the grass. I often return with sounds I did not plan to record.

One evening I was sitting by the water with a brook in the distance. A melody turned up in my head.

I hummed it into my phone before I lost it.

That small voice memo became the starting point for Duottar Disco.

Back in the studio, I built the melody into synth strings and orchestral sounds. I placed the mountain recordings around it. Brooks, birds, wind and grass now sit inside a disco track at 136 BPM. The track has no lyrics. The vocal fragments are chopped and processed.

The original version opens with the field recordings before the rhythm enters. I wanted the mountain to be heard before the track moved fully into disco.

Duottar is the North Sámi word for the open mountain above the treeline.

People have travelled through Sálltoduottar with the reindeer for generations. Sámi communities from both sides of the border have met there during the summer, and there are sacred places across the area.

Alone up there, I kept thinking about the people who had moved through the same landscape long before I arrived with a tent and microphones. At times I could almost sense my ancestors around me.

A field recording captures a small moment. For me, it also carries everything around that moment: the walk, the weather, the lack of sleep and what I was thinking when I pressed record.

That is what I hear in this track.

I hear the water. I hear the phone recording. I hear the mountain sounds after they have been cut, stretched and layered in the studio.

I also hear one tired evening when a melody appeared and I managed to catch it before it disappeared.

Duottar Disco came out on 14 August 2026.