Every so often, I go to a Latvian club in Rīga called Četri balti krekli, where music by only Latvian artists is played. One song that always seems to throw the crowd into a frenzy is this strange tune about windsurfing. At first, I had no idea who performed the song. It was nice enough, if a bit cheesy (especially the English-language chorus: “Surfing, surfing—windsurfing!”). I was surpised to learn that the song is performed by Ingus Pētersons.

From what I knew about Pētersons and his repertoire, I would never have guessed that he was the singer. Pētersons, the artist who in his youth sang slightly more serious songs? Pētersons, the popular singer who abandoned popular music completely to focus on opera? That Pētersons? I didn’t believe it.

But it was true. Though he has had success as an opera singer, his popular songs recorded in the late 1970s and early ‘80s live on, and are being enjoyed by listeners who weren’t even born then.

The recording company MICREC, wisely realizing that there is still a market for these old songs by this older singer, in March released Dziesmu izlase 1979–1982, a career retrospective of Pētersons’ work. The release is part of MICREC’s “Latvijas populārās mūzikas klasika” series. (MICREC competitor Platforma Records in June re-released Pētersons’ first album, Zelta dziesmas šodien in June.)

Up until now, most of these songs were not available on compact disc. One had to go back to scratchy 20-year-old records to find them. Pētersons’ popular music career lasted only about three years, but what a rich three years it was.

The CD collects 22 of Pētersons estrādes songs (“stage” is the most direct translation, but probably translates better as “popular”) from the years 1979-1982. For anyone who listened to the old Mikrofons records back then, many of these songs already will be well known, including classics such as “Par nesatikšanos” (About Never Meeting Again) and “Varavīksne” (Rainbow).

The CD starts off with “Dziesma par skūpstīšanu” (A Song About Kissing), which sounds like it was recorded when Pētersons was a teenager. That’s rather appropriate, as it’s a song about a young guy who has had no luck with the young ladies of the town, and he wonders what he is doing wrong. Hopelessly out-of-date synthesizer sound notwithstanding, this is one of my favorites on the album.

Also on the CD is the aforementioned windsurfing song, “Dziesma par vindserfingu,” which I have grown to like. I originally saw this as just about the cheesiest song in the entire Latvian repertoire, but it is catchy enough that I have even gone as far as to learn to play it on the guitar. “Dziesma par vindserfingu” was originally done as “Windsurfin’” by the Dutch band The Surfers. The Latvian lyrics were written by the well-known songwriter and activist Kaspars Dimiters. The CD booklet contains a biography by Daiga Mazvērsīte, who notes that Pētersons was interested in taking popular songs from outside of Latvia and having them redone in Latvian. Another example is “Mana sirds ir brīva” (My Heart is Free), taken from a Hungarian song.

Another favorite on the album is “Jūra, es dziedu tev,” with music by Raimonds Pauls and lyrics by Jānis Peters. It’s one of many songs that shows not just Pētersons’ range vocally, but also emotionally. On these songs, he is backed by the Latvian Radio Popular Music Orchestra, directed by Alnis Zaķis, or by the Ivars Vīgners Instrumental Ensemble.

Many composers wanted to work with the young Pētersons. As one can see by looking through the credits, practically every important Latvian composer of the day wrote a song for Pētersons, including Pauls, Ivars Vīgners and Uldis Stabulnieks. It is actually a shame that Pētersons left the popular music world so quickly. If he was able to accomplish this much in three years, what could he have done in 10 years or more?

The CD booklet only contains the biography and some pictures. It would have been nice to have the lyrics as well. The sound of the CD is excellent, considering that all these songs are more than 20 years old. Thanks must be given to MICREC for releasing this and many other albums and songs from the classic Latvian popular music repertoire, as well as for spotlighting artists who perhaps aren’t as well known as Pauls. Though some songs clearly show their age, many are still as fresh as when they were released. This album is highly recommended, not just as a historical document, but also as a great collection by one of the great Latvian popular singers.

Arctic cold is just one of the potential killers in Juris Jurjevics’ first novel, The Trudeau Vector. In this engrossing thriller, four scientists are found dead outside an international resesarch station in the Canadian Arctic. Three of them are horribly contorted, their pupils and irises missing. The fourth seems to have evaded whatever killed his colleagues only to have, in the words of an investigator, “turned himself into a popsicle.”

Dr. Jessica Hanley, a crack American epidemiologist, is dispatched from California to determine the cause of the ghastly deaths. She lands at Trudeau Station, located on a small Canadian island in a sea of ice, at the beginning of the long Arctic night. For the next four months the sun will not be seen and the troubled research centre will be plunged into inaccessible darkness.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, an old Cold Warrior named Admiral Rudenko is ordered by his superiors to locate a missing Russian submarine. Its last communication was a distress call issued from a Norwegian fjord. The submarine’s previous port of call was a hole in the ice at Trudeau Station, where it had retrieved the fifth and only surviving member of the group of scientists discovered on the ice.

Were the scientists deliberately poisoned? If so, with what? Did they ingest or inhale chemical toxins? Or were they accidentally exposed to some kind of bacterial life brought into contact with humans for the first time through the alarmingly rapid warming of the arctic climate?

In her attempts to discover what, and possibly who, killed the scientists, epidemiologist Hanley is thrown into the intense tangle of relationships that has evolved at Trudeau Station. Though accustomed to putting her work first, Hanley also struggles with guilt about leaving her son in California for four months while she pursues her investigation. She has little in the way of evidence besides the contorted bodies of the victims and a cryptic entry in one of the deceased researchers’ notes.

The Trudeau Vector is crammed with fascinating information, whether the setting is the Arctic, California, Moscow or the inside of a post-Soviet Russian admiral’s head. We learn that Arctic temperatures are hard on dental work (the cold makes amalgam fillings contract and fall out); that there is an Inuit word meaning “she is kindly disposed to him after having not loved him” and another for “shit happens.” Jurjevics is conversant not only with the language of submarines, medical technology and epidemiology, but also Japanese culinary habits, French-Canadian literature and the engineering possibilities of a research station designed to resemble a giant igloo.

His investigator, Hanley, is a prickly character even when compared with such moodily independent female investigators as Kay Scarpetta, V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone. Hanley is a mass of contradictions, a hippie epidemiologist devoted to wheatgrass juice, Bach Flower Remedies and cigarettes. One of her kindlier colleagues calls her a “nicotine-addicted nature girl,” while her ex-husband complains that her medical advice always sounds like lawn care. Her somewhat abrasive spunkiness will either charm or annoy, depending upon the reader. Particularly at the outset, she is prone to statements so startlingly eccentric that one wonders how she can hold down a job. However, she is a brilliant scientist—and that, in fiction, is enough.

The characters of Rudenko and the other Cold Warriors are drawn with sympathy and, indeed, some romance. Admiral Rudenko’s plight is particularly poignant: that of a one-time naval hero sidelined by a new Russia given over to cell phones, shopping and mafija. In all, the author’s sheer invention is breathtaking—enough to create a finely-drawn, cutting-edge Arctic research station, with plenty left over for sly asides like naming an entomologist Dr. Skudra (in Latvian, “Dr. Ant”). The book is permeated by a sense of outrage at the destruction of the Arctic by global warming, pollution and governmental indifference. It’s safe to say that this is one novelist who will not be called upon to testify before the U.S. Senate about climate change.

The Trudeau Vector is tremendously suspenseful, especially if the idea of being in a submarine makes you nervous. If it doesn’t, there is the intrinsic horror of a place where just stepping outside can prove fatal. Jurjevics succeeds in conveying the weird beauty of the extreme north, its utter and disorienting strangeness.

Jurjevics is the Latvia-born co-founder and publisher of Soho Press in New York City. Among the titles released by Soho is Agate Nesaule’s 1995 autobiography, A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile.

The Latvian composer and folklorist Emilis Melngailis wrote in 1949 that the Latvian tradition of drumming had completely died out. But in the same breath he longed for its renewal, coupled with the bagpipes, which complement the drums so well. It seems the time has finally arrived with Auļi and the compact disc Sen dzirdēju.

Auļi is a sympathetic group of young Latvian men and one Estonian woman who play exactly that combination of drums and bagpipes. The group includes Leanne Barbo, Kaspars Bārbals, Andris Buls, Mikus Čavarts, Gatis Indrēvics, Kaspars Indrēvics, Māris Jēkabsons, Edgars Kārklis, Normunds Vaivads and Gatis Valters.

Formed in 2003, Auļi is a relatively new group in the world of Latvian folk music and plays energetic arrangements of traditional music along with a few of its own compositions.

Auļi is great to watch live, because the group members have so much fun on stage. Unfortunately, drums and bagpipes just aren’t the same on a recording as they are live. But it’s still obvious from the 12-track CD that Auļi enjoys creating “bungu raksti” (weaving and craft terminology used to describe drumming patterns) and playing around with all the possibilities of bagpipes. The group rounds out its sound with flutes, the Jew’s harp and singing.

The CD starts out with Auļi’s signature song, “Sen dzirdēju.” It is followed by the whispers and yells of “Cīrulītis.” “Sūda dziesma” is a song in honor of, yes, manure. “Depo” (the calmest song on the disc) and “Pieci” are original compositions for bagpipes and drums, respectively. “Reigi valsis,” “Pāvs,” “Balabaska” and “Apaļdancis” are all dance tunes, the last of which contains some unusual bagpipe effects and harmonies.

There’s no mystery as to why Auļi is popular among a certain segment of the young population. The music and vibrations touch that primitive nerve deep in the stomach.

Auļi’s sound is also unmistakably military. That’s because historically bagpipes and drums have been associated primarily with war. But surprisingly, only two of the songs have texts about going off to battle.

Auļi fits very well into the niche of medieval and folk-metal festivals. So, if that’s your niche as well, and if you don’t mind the constant buzz of bagpipes and driving drum beats, you’ll probably like this CD.

As the liner notes say, the group “makes noise.” But I know plenty of people age 30 and older who like Auļi, and I think my mother will like the group, too.