Adjagas is “a state between sleeping and waking. It is where you get in touch with issues and messages that are important to you. It is also said that the Sami learned yoiking from the ulda people that live in another world parallel to our own, in the Adjagas state of mind.”

Adjagas are twentysomething Sami yoikers Lawra Somby and Sara Marielle Gaup. The Sami people used to be known as Laplanders, but the latter term is now considered as politically correct as Bernard Manning. And the yoik? Well, the church in Norway, where the bulk of the Samis reside, labelled yoiks as “songs of the Devil.”

The yoik, though, is less a song than a rhythmic mantra. Perhaps the genre’s most famous exponent is Mari Boine who has blended yoiks with jazz and rock. Her work gained a wider experience when it was sampled by rappers Vanilla Ice and Xzibit.

Sharing the child-like naivety of Bjork’s output, Somby and Gaup communicate most effectively when they keep things simple. Notably on ‘Mun ja Mun’, a South-Sami-style yoik which sees the phrase of the title which translates as “I and I” repeated by the pair, accompanied by some subtle Mano-Chao-esque backing instrumentation.

The states of various Scandinavian and indeed east European countries may have tried their best to kill the yoik, but it still exists – smouldering like a barely-lit fire. Fittingly, to listen to Adjagas is to dream of a beautiful ghost – so prepare to be haunted by a vision. In more ways than one.
(5/5)