Bergljot: Solen avløser regnet som avløser solen

The Czech-Norwegian trio Bergljot is now at its third incarnation. The trio—Czech pianist Vojtěch Procházka, whose musical background includes experimenting with extensive work with electronic keyboards, classical Indian music, as well as jazz—along with Norwegian double bassist Adrian Fiskum Myhr, who explores the sonic vocabulary through preparations and extended bowing techniques, and drummer Tore T. Sandbakken, who plays with Myhr in a trio with French saxophonist Michel Doneda.

This trio began working as the Vojtěch Procházka Trio, playing modern jazz classic compositions by Ornette Coleman, Herbie Nichols, Paul Motian and Procházka's orginal compositions. It recorded one album, Amoeba's Dance (Animal Music, 2010), before transforming itself into a free jazz trio. Now, in its current incarnation it focuses on a minimalistic approach and slow development, enhanced with inventive and extended techniques that enrich the trio's sound and charge it with energetic flow.

The debut of the trio with the name Bergljot was recorded after extensive tours of the trio all over Europe. The five pieces feature the unique, thick sound of the trio where the piano, double bass, drum skins and cymbals sound as an extension of the other instruments. The wooden qualities of the piano's structure, or the metallic sounds of its strings, find parallels with the double bass' wooden body and drums skins, or the double bass strings, and the touch of the bow on the strings as the cymbals magnifies them and enhances its harmonics and overtones until the trio reaches an organically new sonic terrain that no longer sounds like the conventional sound of these three acoustic instruments.

The trio's interplay is disciplined, and investigates thoroughly and deeply the myriad sonic possibilities within any sound that the trio plays. Bergljot begins to vary its interplay with the open-ended, playful "Brott," continues with "Bak Fram," where the sonic envelope of the trio already sounds like a static, industrial series of strange sounding ripples but reaches its climax with the 15 minutes title piece. This piece emphasizes the patient and careful manner that the trio carves its nuanced sounds from minimal, transparent ones to expansive, powerful ones, from subtle and ethereal interplay to intense and energetic, all with impressive command of the trio's instruments.

Bergljot's presents a bold sonic aesthetic, realizing it with an arresting performance.