Jazz Articles
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Peder Simonsen & Jo David Meyer Lysne: Spektralmaskin
by Glenn Astarita
Strap yourselves in, spectral travelers, for a journey into the sonic labyrinth that is Peder Simonsen and Jo David Meyer Lysne's Spektralmaskin. This album is not background music for folding laundry. Simonsen and Lysne weave a tapestry of sound that is both unsettling and strangely beautiful. Imagine a haunted music box possessed by a playful but melancholic ghost. Per the press release: “(The word spektralmaskin, Norwegian for 'spectral machine,' is Lysne and Simonsen's attempt to encapsulate the e-bow ...
Continue ReadingAviva Endean: cinder: ember: ashes
by Glenn Astarita
Aviva Endean's debut album for the Norwegian label SOFA is heady and gleams with interesting abstracts. In addition to her improvisational acumen, she is a shaper of sound. Endean toggles between various clarinet types on each track. With asynchronous minimalist parts and microtonal aspects, she also executes darkly weaving passages, iterated with an alien dichotomy. This outing should also whet the appetite of music scholars and avant-garde adventure seekers: it is not “Sunday afternoon music" by any stretch.
Continue ReadingStreifenjunko: Like Driving
by Glenn Astarita
The artists' first venture into the world of electronics is quietly mesmerizing and off the beaten path as some would say. Espen Reinertsen (saxophone) and Eivind Lønning (trumpet)'s previous albums, No Longer Burning (SOFA, 2009) and Sval Torv (SOFA, 2012), were acoustic sound-sculpting endeavors. And both musicians have performed together in pianist Christian Wallumrød's ensemble. On this release they rewind the clock and come up with a solid game-plan during the album inception, while not totally entrenched in a conventional ...
Continue ReadingMuddersten: Playmates
by Glenn Astarita
The amusing cover art is a take-off on a 16th and 17th century Flanders and Netherlands tradition of still life themes known as vanitas (vanity) paintings that basically portray aspects not deemed important when it comes down to living a fruitful life. Somehow, this experimental Scandinavian trio ties all of these connotations into four distinct tracks, “Private Pleasure 1--4." Akin to life's endless trail of diversions, moods, and routes to happiness, these four pieces are executed with largely ...
Continue ReadingMiguel Angel Tolosa: Ephimeral
by Glenn Astarita
Spanish sound designer Miguel Angel Tolosa is a Renaissance man, performing on all instruments and / or devices while demonstrating his audio engineering prowess on his inaugural solo album for the Norwegian experimental record label, SOFA Music. Moreover, he's been an integral part of this label's output while also recording for other US and European entities and having his compositions interpreted by flutist Allesandra Rombala and Trio Arbus among others. Per Tolosa, the premise for this outing is ...
Continue ReadingKeith Rowe and John Tilbury: Enough still not to know
by John Eyles
It was back in late 2011 that the last collaboration between Keith Rowe and John Tilbury was issued, E.E. Tension and Circumstance (Potlatch, 2011), having been recorded live in Paris in December 2010. As that was their second duo recording, following the double CD Duos for Doris (Erstwhile, 2003), and they had not played together since Rowe left AMM in 2004, it was not unduly pessimistic for the review of it to conclude, “[W]e know from Duos for Doris that ...
Continue ReadingMural: Tempo
by John Eyles
The most significant thing about Tempo is that it was recorded live in concert at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. This octagonal space (pictured on the album cover, right) opened in 1971, a year after Mark Rothko's death. It is sparsely furnished and painted white, with fourteen of Rothko's late works--large black canvasses--displayed around its walls. All of this gives the chapel a unique ambience that is conducive to quiet contemplation, if not prayer. It has inspired musicians ranging ...
Continue ReadingThe Pitch: Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam)
by Glenn Astarita
Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam) is an appropriate moniker for these two works performed live at an Amsterdam venue by the core Berlin-based quartet The Pitch, with assistance from a combination of six woodwinds and strings performers. With inadvertent semblances to minimalist composer Morton Feldman, the music is largely about ever-so-subtle shifts in sound design and pitch. As a whole, the program is difficult to pigeonhole. Yet the trancelike and undulating attributes tender curiously interesting timbres, abetted by Boris Baltschun's reverberating electric ...
Continue ReadingBergljot: Solen avløser regnet som avløser solen
by Eyal Hareuveni
The Czech-Norwegian trio Bergljot is now at its third incarnation. The trio--Czech pianist Vojtěch Procházka, whose musical background includes experimenting with extensive work with electronic keyboards, classical Indian music, as well as jazz--along with Norwegian double bassist Adrian Myhr, who explores the sonic vocabulary through preparations and extended bowing techniques, and drummer Tore Sandbakken, who plays with Myhr in a trio with French saxophonist Michel Doneda. This trio began working as the Vojtěch Procházka Trio, playing ...
Continue ReadingSidsel Endresen: One
by John Kelman
While those around her were busy exploring the nexus of technology and conventional instrumentation at the 2006 Punkt Festival in Kristiansand, Norway, Sidsel Endresen was demonstrating just how much could be done with one unaltered human voice. One documents the advances she's made in stretching the potential of voice and articulation. It's a record that eschews, for the most part, conventions like melody, pulse and lyric. Still, despite its improvised nature, this brief 32-minute set is not without form or ...
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