Huntsville: For Flowers, Cars, and Merry Wars (2011)

GLENN ASTARITA,

Glenn Astarita

Senior Contributor since 1997

Longtime contributor to AAJ and Downbeat, Jazz Review, EjazzNews, Radio DirectX.

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Published: October 15, 2011

Huntsville: For Flowers, Cars, and Merry Wars

Track review of "Ear/Eye Connector"

Hubro Music is a young and adventurous label from Norway. Here, electronics rule the roost, featuring three prominent musicians noted for their many-sided, avant-garde albums for the country's Sofa label. These and other interrelationships accentuate Scandinavia's unique approach to jazz improvisation and off-kilter productions, often confronting rigid classifications. Musically speaking, Huntsville is a prime example of Scandinavia's innovative applications.

"Ear/Eye Connector" offers a hyper-Tangerine Dream-like, undulating rhythmic ostinato, tinted with a faint eeriness that overlays the background. With streaming electronics the trio surges into a perky space journey across an eternal cosmic vacuum. At times understated yet cyclically powerful, one of the musicians employs a copper-toned hue, perhaps indicative of asteroids passing by the ship, the piece conjuring notions of classic space-rock, but the musicians injecting a somewhat inexplicable organic element here, as well as into a good portion of this four-track album.

Huntsville's mode of attack is hip and nouveau, but by no means ordinary. Perhaps its members' free-jazz and avant-garde backgrounds help enlist a cunning edge to the tried-and-true. With ethereal imagery that can seem evasive, Huntsville generates an abstract view that seeds an abundance of absorbing proposals.

Personnel: Ivar Grydeland: guitars, banjo, effects; Tonnu Kluften: bass, effects; Ingar Zach: percussion, effects.

Record Label: Hubro Records
Style: Modern Jazz