Dick Lovgren

Samuel Hällkvist: Epik Didaktik Pastoral

by Chris May
July 19, 2020

Swedish guitarist Samuel Hällkvist's rifftastic electric trio plays an exhilarating mixture of jazz, prog rock and minimalist music. Riffs aside, the key ingredients are cross rhythms, rhythmic displacement and lavish servings of MIDI-enabled keyboards and tuned percussion. The result is heavy on the tension and light on the release. A close comparator is Swiss keyboard player Nik Bärtsch's work with Ronin in the mid 2000s. Try and keep count of the beats and you might well go mad. Better to ...