Gush

Gush: Afro Blue

by John Sharpe
May 21, 2024

Time brings perspective. The three members of the Swedish band Gush--pianist Sten Sandell, drummer Raymond Strid and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson--were amazed at the quality of the music on this archive tape when they heard it again a quarter century after it was recorded, having forgotten about it completely in the interim. And they are right to be taken aback. The recording, from a concert in Stockholm in December 1998, is simply magnificent. This is unsurprising in retrospect, as all three ...

Gush: Norrk

by AAJ Staff
March 27, 2006

By Ken Waxman

After more than seventeen years together, the members of the Swedish-based Gush trio now operate as three interlocking parts of one perpetual motion machine. Occupied enough with other projects, the three players--reedist Mats Gustafsson, pianist Sten Sandell and drummer Raymond Strid--bring a complementary desire for melded invention when they unite, as they did in Norrköping in 2003, for this, the band's first-ever domestic release in North America.

Fully in command of all elements of its instruments, the ...

Gush: Norrk

by Jerry D'Souza
July 30, 2005

Sound is a kaleidoscope of shapes. Here, it is formed by a trio that includes Mats Gustafsson, a multi-instrumentalist who has wet his lips in the company of Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, and John Corbett. Is it any surprise, then, that the music honks and hollers, spewing a volcanic steam of notes? But even as that happens, it relaxes into the calm of aftermath, soft shades that encompass interludes on the piano, a conversation with the drums, and moments of ...