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Espen Eriksen Trio with Andy Sheppard: As Good As It Gets
ByWhat is also remarkable is that EET has been able to retain its distinctive identity while simultaneously shaking it out with the British guest tenor saxophonist Andy Sheppard. Sheppard was first featured on the studio album Perfectly Unhappy (Rune Grammafon, 2018), and then on the live set In The Mountains (Rune Grammafon, 2022).
Sheppard has said that "I knew from the first time I heard the trio play that I would fit right in. I loved the melodic sense and vibe and was thrilled when I was invited to guest in London with the trio." EET chose their saxophonist wisely. Sheppard is one of the most remarkable saxophonists to emerge in Britain since the late 1980s, and the advent of younger artists such as Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and Binker Golding has done nothing to diminish his lustre.
Indeed, Sheppard is held in some reverence by the younger players. In a 2021 interview with AAJ, for instance, Hutchings named Sheppard's Romaria (ECM, 2018) as one of six albums which had left a particularly deep impression on him, one which he had gone back to many times and continued to learn from. "I even wrote Andy a message, saying thank you so much, I listen to the album every day," said Hutchings. "It links with the tradition that comes from John Surman and some of the early works of Jan Garbarek in the way there is a poetic quality to the statements that are made on the saxophone. When I first heard it I remember thinking, how do I make my music sound more poetic, like Andy does?" (Hutchings' interview can read in full here.)
As the title suggests, As Good As It Gets has a subtly different atmosphere than Perfectly Unhappy. The melancholia scale is few degrees lower, the temperature a few higher, and the sun is shining a little bit brighter. Not that EET have ever been gloom merchants but... Nordic is as Nordic does. There is only one, minor disappointment: "Pressure," the most intense and dramatic track, fades out rather than coming to a hard stop; it is a bit of an anticlimax. The tension is bled instead by the following, loosely swinging "The American." Maybe that was the group's conscious intention. Whatever. It really does not matter. As Good As It Gets is, near as damn it, precisely that.
Track Listing
The Other Side Of Melancholy; Endless; As Good As It Gets; Sticks And Stones; Pressure; The American; Drifting Clouds.
Personnel
Album information
Title: As Good As It Gets | Year Released: 2023 | Record Label: Rune Grammofon
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