Sigurd Hole ensemble: Extinction Sounds

Sigurd Hole has proven himself a composer to watch with a string of releases blurring the lines between chamber jazz, modern classical composition and experimentation, often feeling more like organic transmissions than conventional songs. His solo double album Lys / Mørke (Self Produced, 2020) was recorded on the isolated Norwegian island of Fleinvær, and brings the intonations of its birds and biting winds into conversation with the similarly textural manipulations of his bowed and plucked bass. On the striking ensemble recording Roraima (Self Produced, 2022), he utilizes field recordings from the Amazonian rainforest to great effect, composing melodies inspired by birdsong and rhythms by the movements of forest floor denizens.

Extinction Sounds extends Hole's approach in which his compositions are informed by the cadences and timbres of the living world. It is evinced beautifully on the cover itself, which could suggest a reciprocal or symbiotic relationship between music and flora. The program is no less inspired than Roraima, yet the results are more austere, drawing on the windswept soundworld of his childhood cabin of Innlandet rather than the fecund symphony of the rainforest. 

Listeners of Lys / Mørke will recognize in "Whispers of air and dust" the undulations of Hole's bowed bass, evoking billows of illuminated particles. "Four rooms" is a disconcerting textural feast, its percussion and scraping strings resounding with cinematic dread. 

As the album progresses, Hole's talented lineup comes to the fore. The keys of multi-instrumentalist and composer Jon Balke emerge in flashes of graspable tempo and melody only to give way to the untamed strings of Sara Övinge, Bendik Bjørnstad Foss, and Tanja Orning.. The largely subtle percussion of Veslemøy Narvesen is at times cavernous and enveloping, an ideal counterpoint to the higher registers of Hole's string players.

There is a bleaker angle to Extinction Sounds, to be sure, as Hole explains: "I dabbled with a conceptual idea, a question: what if extinction had its own sound? What would the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs sound like? What would the last 10,000 years sound like, compared to the rest?" An ambitious idea, elegantly reflected in the album's push-pull between elements that are more conventionally arranged and those that reflect the chaotic, unpredictable qualities of nature. Hole grapples with our ecological future with not just beauty, but the profound uncertainty that is warranted by our ongoing environmental crisis.