Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Oddjob: Folk

13

Oddjob: Folk

By

View read count
Oddjob: Folk
In the mood for a snifter of schnapps, a kick back in the easy chair and a night soaking in some Swedish folk songs, tunes centered, for the most part, around the tradition of herding and goat calling? Aside from the schnapps part, that may seem like a lame idea, but the very progressive Swedish jazz/rock group, Oddjob, dug deep into their homeland's recorded archives and took away the inspiration that resulted in this marvelous and uniquely modern recording, Folk.

Oddjob, a quintet of the common jazz instrumentation—trumpet/reed/piano/bass and drums—pulls a Modular Synthesizer and Crumar organ into the mix to craft complex, striated arrangements of their reinterpretations of these simple songs. The group creates ambiances that are sometimes murky, with Per "Rusktrask" Johanson's bass clarinet laying a deep fuzz foundation, and sometimes crystal clear, with a clarion trumpet blowing over a sizzling textures. And then there are ghost-like, low-in-the-mix howlings sounding like winds blowing in off the steppes.

There's a bit of that familiar Scandinavian melancholy, but more often than not the music brims with an organic ebullience and joy, making some of the tunes quite fun and danceable. And there are a few snippets slipped in from the inspirational folkloric source recordings of actual goat calling, piercing female voices that bring to mind deranged coyotes, that sound not unlike the song of the Somalian ladies that bandleader/pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi used on the title tune on her masterpiece, Desert Lady/Fantasy (Columbia Records, 1994). It seems there is a something universal in geographically disparate folk musics.

On paper, an odd endeavor perhaps. Blowing out of the speakers: extraordinary!

Track Listing

Folk #1; Folk #2; Folk #3; Folk #4; Folk #5; Folk #6; Folk #7.

Personnel

Peter Forss: bass; Per "Rusktrask" Johansson: alto and sopranino saxophone, bass clarinet, alto flute; Goran Kajifes: trumpet and Modular Synthesizer; Daniel Karlsson: Grand Piano and Crumar Organ; Janne Robertson: drums.

Album information

Title: Folk | Year Released: 2015 | Record Label: Caprice Records

Tags

Comments

About Oddjob

Articles | Concerts | Albums | Photos | Similar

PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.