Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Lars Bech Pilgaards Slowburn: Som før

5

Lars Bech Pilgaards Slowburn: Som før

Lars Bech Pilgaards Slowburn: Som før
Danish guitarist Lars Bech Pilgaard has been involved in a number of underground projects and has his own record label, Mom Eat Dad Records. Recently, he has moved in an exciting new direction where influences from African music, jazz and experimental rock are combined. This original sound was featured prominently on his new project, Klimaforandringer (Climate Change), and he continues to add new layers to this sound on the album Som før (As before).

This time, the band is not Klimaforandringer, but Slowburn, one of Bech Pilgaard's older projects. Together with bassist Thommy Andersson, drummer Thomas Eiler and reed-player, Lars Greve, he creates repetitive and rhythmical drones that unfold a strange landscape of sound. However, the use of melodic riffs gives the music immediate accessibility as the textures change.

"African Koral" builds up rhythmical tension that is not released before Bech Pilgaard's African high life-guitar licks are transformed into a trashy outburst of noise while "Jiro" is all pawnshop-surf guitar and throaty horn motifs.

"Drømme" ("Dreams") is a psychedelic landscape with Andersson's thick electric bass laying the foundation for a journey where a spider-web of crystalline guitar sounds slowly evolve into a steady rhythm. This tension between poetic abstraction and immediate riffs and rhythm lies at the heart of this fascinating record that sounds as if the iconic post-rock band Slint travelled to Africa to play jazz and psychedelic music.

Som før is released digitally and on delicious green vinyl, but it comes without a cover, there's only an inner sleeve. This kind of signifier of an underground release is unfortunate because Som før actually goes beyond the narrow community of the underground. It might be that the musical language of this group is experimental, but it is also accessible and should be able to reach out to a wider audience than the packaging suggests.

Track Listing

Jiro; Afrikansk Koral; Jens; Usikker; Drømme; Jens; Etnisk; Som før.

Personnel

Lars Bech Pilgaard: guitar; Thommy Andersson: bass; Thomas Eiler: drums; Lars Greve: clarinet.

Album information

Title: Som før | Year Released: 2016 | Record Label: Mom Eat Dad Records

Tags

Comments


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.

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.