The duo of Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts and Norwegian
experimental musician Fredrik Rasten fuses their respective work
with traditional music, folk song and microtonal minimalism. Their
first encounter was in the septet Alasdair Roberts & Völvur, which
released the LP The Old Fabled River on Drag City Records in
2021.The record combined Roberts’s compositions with versions of
Scottish and Norwegian traditional songs.
On Seven Weathers, their forthcoming double album for Drag City
Records, Roberts and Rasten focus on traditional Scottish narrative
ballads, typically of long duration, where slowly evolving musical
materials build up throughout the strophic verse-structure to
emphasise the storytelling. They choose ballads with care, favouring
time-transcending narrative themes that both bear witness to the day
and age of their origin and are relevant to our times, be that
politically, culturally or ethically. Both sing and play a variety
of acoustic and electronic instruments, Roberts’s clear and
unadorned vocal delivery blending with Rasten’s sensibilities of
just intonation tuning and timbral qualities of sound.
Seven Weathers is scheduled for release in January 2027, and Roberts
and Rasten will concurrently undertake a short album launch tour.
Throughout 2024/5 they have enjoyed concerts in Glasgow, Berlin,
Prague, Motvind Festival (Norway), Fanø Free Folk Festival (Denmark)
and ne:ar Festival (Slovakia), and have an upcoming appearance at
Frequency Festival (Chicago, USA) in February 2026 as well as a
short Norwegian tour in May 2026.