Saft - People In Motion/ Albertine Hall

Norwegian folk/prog rockers with their one UK 45 release

Label: Polydor

Year of Release: 1971

The Eurovision Song Contest is huge fun but if there's one horrible way it blighted European society, it was the manner in which Norwegians were stereotyped as musical ignoramuses (in the UK media at least). For years the Norwegians slogged away at the contest valiantly, admittedly putting some ropey entries forward in the process, frequently finishing last and never bettering their record third place (in 1963) until they finally won in 1985, the same year A-Ha broke through into the global mainstream. 

Of course, the Eurovision Song Contest was no more a fair barometer of what was going on in Norwegian music than it was British music. If here in the UK we had more to offer than Black Lace, Cliff Richard and Brotherhood Of Man, it figures that somewhere beneath Norway's highest profile musical moments had to lie a raft of other, better stuff drifting somewhere beneath the televisual radar. 

Saft are a prime example of an inventive and constantly surprising rock band who put out plenty of material which found huge appreciation in Norway at the time, and has since managed to gain a small audience in the UK too. Formed in Bergen in 1969 by Ove Thue (lead vocals and guitar), Trygve Thue (guitars, piano, flute, vocals), Tom Harry (keyboards), Magne Lunde (drums) and Rolf Skogstrand (bass), the group were masterful prog musicians who nonetheless did not eschew melody in their search for impressive fretwork and arrangements. A live performance over on YouTube shows a group who were closer to jazzy or bluesy excursions than flashy freakouts or Stockhausen-esque experimentation. 

There were also folk elements to their music, and they were the first group in Norway to record in the rural Nynorsk language, which set them apart from their contemporaries.  

Nonetheless, they weren't averse to putting out much more straightforward singles, and "People In Motion" is probably their finest, shoving all that noodling off the table and producing a 45 which has something of the spark and effervescence of glam rock about it. "People in motion/ can you feel it coming?" they tease, before delivering a stomping chorus which assures their audience that even if they couldn't, it's there right in front of them now. 

"People In Motion" has done the rounds quite a bit over the last 20-30 years and still remains available on Spotify and iTunes, so is off limits for us - but the B-side "Albertine Hall" only managed to slide out on a very limited "Fading Yellow" release some time ago, and hasn't been seen since. That one is worth your time too, having a beautiful, meandering, bluesy melody, all gently tumbling piano lines and end-of-summer melodies. In short, this is a fine single whichever side you choose to play, and deserved to fare better over here.

While the original line-up of the group hasn't stayed intact, a version of Saft still occasionally gets together for gigs in Norway. 

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