Daniel Herskedal: Call For Winter II: Resonance

Among the strangest all-horns discs ever heard in this parish is How It All Started (Hat Hut, 2007) by the Swiss quartet Mytha. Led by free improv and third stream trumpeter Hans Kennel, the group plays music made almost entirely on alphorns, heavy wooden horns ten to twelve feet long with curved bells that rest on the ground. They look a little like Tibetan dungchen, though those are made of metal. Alphorns seem to have been developed back in the mists of time to communicate from high mountain top to high mountain top across wide Alpine valleys. Given their original purpose and gigantic size, they have a surprisingly non-lumpen mellifluous sound. (A review of How It All Started can be read here.)

Call For Winter II: Resonance is another strange one (jazz likes strange). Like Mytha's disc, it is all horns and has a high-altitude pedigree. Recorded in a cabin in the mountains near Røros in Norway during the depths of winter 2024, it is a solo recording by bass trumpeter and tuba player Daniel Herskedal. There is plenty of overdubbing and, one imagines, a fair bit of electronic wizardry, but no other instruments, other than some beats on the title track (check the YouTube below). The album is in the same bag as Herskedal's Call For Winter (Edition, 2020).

If the album title, recording location and instrumentation suggest a sound that is on the bleak side and boomy and cumbersome with it, the actuality is otherwise. The eleven tracks on Resonance are lyrical and abstract rather than abstract and chilly, and Herskedal spends as much time in the upper registers of his two instruments as he does at their bottom ends. Factor in his agility on what are, while not as big as alphorns, by any standard still outsize instruments and the listening experience is a buoyant one.

That said, the seasonal mood of the album may be a little too flatline for some listeners. But such decisions are Herskedal's to make and if he chooses not to be a modern day Vivaldi, fair enough. This review was written during summer 2024 and it will be interesting to hear how Resonance sounds in winter 2025. Daring in conception and nicely realized, the album is one that will be worth returning to.

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