On his second solo album, 2025's Gamle Mester, Wobbler keyboard player Lars Fredrik Frøislie unleashed a tour de force of old-school analogue wizardry. He kindly invited Prog into his magical world of vintage instrumentation to find out more.
In this modern world of progressive rock, with new acts appearing all the time, albums that are based solely around keyboards remain unusual. Even rarer are those that rely solely on analogue instruments. One of the few remaining flag-bearers for this style of instrumentation is Lars Fredrik Frøislie, best known for his work with Norwegian bands Wobbler and White Willow. A visit to Frøislie’s basement reveals a treasure trove of vintage instruments – enough to warm the cockles of any 70s prog fan.
“They have a sort of soul, you know, because of the smell and touch as well as their sound,” he says, reflecting on his passion for the musical tools of that era. “I recently posted a video online where I was turning on the Mellotron and some of the other instruments and got lots of reactions, just from flicking switches to get them started.”
The sheer accumulation of such instruments must have taken a great deal of time and cost a fortune. Indeed, alongside the Mellotron, Hammond, Minimoog, ARP Soloist and Clavinet, there’s a harpsichord. There can’t be too many musicians who have one of those in their basement. Frøislie admits the cost was high but, bizarrely, he managed to rent quite a lot of the equipment from National Radio in Bulgaria, where they were simply taking up space. He also notes that while his heroes Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks, Keith Emerson and Kerry Minnear of Gentle Giant used analogue instruments in the 1970s, in the 80s and 90s their sound palette often changed to brassier, more digital keyboard textures.
“These [digital] sounds were not so optimal for me. So I always go back to the early 1970s because those sounds are timeless, even though they’re from before I was born.”
Gamle Mester is very keyboard-based, as you might expect, but it does contain other instrumentation. The hugely impressive drum work is played by Frøislie himself.
“My brother had bands, and on the farm we lived on as a child, we had a rehearsal studio with lots of instruments. I sneaked up there and played the drums. I’ve played them since I was around 12, whereas I got my first keyboard when I was 10.”
Frøislie isn’t a natural vocalist. His chosen singing language, Norwegian, will intrigue some listeners, given its genuinely otherworldly quality. It suits him since he’s wary of singing in what he might consider “bad English”.
“Kraftwerk are excused for singing in terrible English. But otherwise…when the Italian bands, for instance, do that, it turns me off. I have no idea how Norwegians sound to foreigners, but Italian is beautiful, while Norwegian is perhaps more brutal. I’m not a show-off type of singer, but I hope that I still get the emotion through.”
The main guest is bassist Nikolai Hængsle and Frøislie is full of praise.
“He’s as professional as you can get,” he enthuses. “Sometimes bass players have a very slick sound and don’t really get the music. But this guy has the same tastes as me. He came without having heard the tracks in advance, but was ready to do one take perfectly and then a variation on it, if I wanted it a different way. He’s also got all these obscure pedals from the 1960s. Plus he’s an extremely nice guy."
Ketil Vestrum Einarsen, who will be familiar to readers for his work with Jaga Jazzist and White Willow, also came in for some very varied flute and recorder. Further variations in instrumental texture come from Frøislie’s impressive keys collection and he talks with wonder about his Clavinet, often used in prog for its percussive texture.
“I run it through fuzz pedals, Leslie speakers, tremolo pedals and space echoes and all these sorts of things, so it sounds more like a guitar,” he says. “Since this album has no actual guitars, I also use the harpsichord instead of a 12-string acoustic.”
There are moments of real spontaneity that build on Frøislie’s first album, especially the improvised organ solo in Medusas Flåte (‘The Raft Of The Medusa’). “It had this kind of furious energy to it, which I thought would be impossible to recreate,” he says. “So I just had to use whatever I had to record it quickly, which was just one microphone, which I generally only use to record ideas. But sometimes these ideas can’t be reproduced, so I put it into the song and then added bass and drums on top of that improvised part.”
These ingredients make Gamle Mester an album that has a bit of everything – atmosphere, energy, melody, a delightfully old-school baroque feel, as well as complexity and virtuoso playing. It’s a fine one-sitting listen, with a sympathetic audiophile mastering job from Jacob Holm-Lupo of White Willow. Yet despite his more solitary way of working on this album, the musician still enjoys Wobbler’s more collaborative approach.
“I like the balance because then I get an outlet for both approaches,” he says. “With Wobbler, we make things together. But it takes quite some time because everyone has to learn it, to perhaps play it live or record it in the studio. So we’re often a bit tired of the material when we’re recording. In Wobbler, we’re jamming and creating something together, which is more meaningful in a band setting. However, the structure of this album was mainly thought out before I started recording. I had a whole map in my head. I always add improvised elements to get some spontaneity. It makes you sit a bit on the edge of your seat; I love that.”
