The Nordic Jazz sound has situated itself solidly at a distance from Jazz’s epicenter… introspective, austere, with drifting melodies, and rhythms that often eschew swing for drama. And as musicians from that fold push the envelope ever outward, it gets to where, perhaps, the music stops being Jazz at all. In the face of whether an album is of value, this genre philosophizing is a small matter.

What is of more compelling, though ancillary interest, is that by pushing the borders of Jazz outward, musicians who typically play other types of music are testing the waters of Jazz. Some, like Splashgirl, have actually built a foundation in one of the slight areas of fuzziness where genres cross over.

Combining elements of a Jazz piano trio, ambient electronica, and alt-classical new-schoolers like Nils Frahm, with Pressure, Splashgirl has created an intoxicating brand of music that may be tough to categorize, but very easy to enjoy.

Your album personnel: Andreas Stensland Løwe (piano, synths, electronics), Jo Berger Myhre (double bass, drone commander), Andreas Lønmo Knudsrød (drums), Juhani Silvola (guitar), and guests: Erik Johannesen (trombone), Martin Taxt (tuba), Lasse Passage Nøsted (tape feedback, field recordings), Mari Kvien Brunvoli (vocals).

The mood is incredibly consistent across the expanse of the album’s seven tracks. Though brooding, the music maintains a rapid pulse, displaying plenty of life for an album that acts as if it would prefer spending the entire day staring off into the horizon.

Piano is most at the forefront of this music, though the electronic effects sometimes wash over it with mixed results. The utilization of technology isn’t overdone, thankfully, but it does sometimes drown out the heart of the piano trio. But when that piano trio shines through, it’s something to behold.

Splashgirl uses the phrase “jazz drone” to describe some of its music, and that’s not far from the truth. The album’s opening track “Devata” brings the moody piano with some sparse guitar twang, which all gets washed away by song’s end with electronic drone and crackle. This effect isn’t unique to the opening track; fifth track “The Other Side” employs a similar format, though is heavier on piano, and a lighter touch on the effects and dissonance. And album closer, the title-track “Pressure,” uses the same format, but flips the equation on its head… the album opens with the volume and layered dissonance, which slowly gets stripped away until all that remains are the quietude of piano and odd bits of percussion.

One of the stronger album moments that pops up throughout is when Lowe’s piano flutters and shines, elevating the tone and tempo slowly skyward. Second track “Creature of Light” begins like this, eventually ceding way to the bass drum thump and guitar twang of the tune’s latter half.

“Alpha State of Mind” sets the table with a long low drone, while piano nibbles pensively at its meal. Tuba is the main course, grounding the tune with its steady patient tone.

Tracks like “Ravine” stray closest to the traditional Nordic jazz piano trio. Careful, studied, and economical in thought. A song made for self-absorption. Pretty, too.

“Concerning This Square” stands out at the high watermark of the album. Beginning with a full embrace of repetition a la Steve Reich, the trio scoots along at a frenetic pace. Through the repetition, the tune gains substance, thick like the same crayon repeatedly coloring over the same image. And then, suddenly, a low drone breaks through the clouds, of bowed bass, trombone, and tuba. It remains for a moment, disappears, then returns just as dramatically to bring the tune to its final passage, which ends with the drone’s fade, gently drifting piano notes, and the gallop of percussion.

Pressure is a decent album. By itself, it presents some interesting facets of what the trio is now, but also what could on the horizon. It’ll be interesting to track their development as individual musicians, but even more so, their positioning on the borders of jazz and other genres.

Released in 2011 on the Hubro Music label.

Jazz from Norway.

Available at eMusic. Available at Amazon: CD | MP3 | Vinyl

The choice of notes has to be impeccable, since there ain’t gonna be as many to offer the listener. Honor has to be paid to the silence, and used as effectively as the sound made from the black and whites. Bass and drums have to be more than just tools of accompaniment, but in the framework of the quiet piano trio, they need to be sure to only use their Inside Voices. And then there’s the compositions themselves… it makes for great drama to witness the pianist furrow the brow and grimace and fire the inner core in the search for the perfect notes, but on a studio recording, none of that is gonna translate to the listener through the speakers if the tunes don’t have some spark of life, and all that dramatic minimalism will get drowned out by snores.

But the thing of it is, hushed moments of massive silence can be as dramatic as any battery of sound and fury. Anyone who has stood in a wide open field and watched the progress of a storm front approach from the distance will understand this. Black clouds, streaks of lightning, no breeze whatsoever, a stillness permeating the surroundings, and only the far away grumble of thunder to ripple the silence as the whole damn world sits quietly in reverent awe of the force of nature so far away but felt so innately in the bones. Moments like these are heavy with emotion, yet, also, testaments to the power of silence. Done right, a piano trio can induce these same types of feelings.

Colin Valon’s Rruga does it right.

Your album personnel: Colin Vallon (piano), Patrice Moret (double bass), and Samuel Rohrer (drums).

For all its moodiness, there is a sense of optimism throughout. Rruga doesn’t get bogged down in so much introspection that the prevailing aspect is one of torpor. This album is bright eyed and hopeful, even though dark clouds loom perpetually overhead. Tracks like “Home” with their gentle pace, skating across a field of ice, crystallizing each frozen moment in time. But by focusing on the motion of the skaters, Vallon brings the compositions to life, instead of just vacantly staring at a sheet of ice and falling asleep. A few of Vallon’s ECM bandleaders should take that cue from him.

Quite noteworthy of the album are the builds of rising tension and volume, as on “Telepathy,” which have a lovely combustion to them, and their achievement of elevation is done methodically without sacrificing any of the raw emotion.

There are also enchanting interludes of repetition, particularly in the lower registers, juxtaposed against a meandering walk in the uppers. Tracks like “Meral” and “Rruga, var.” are reminiscent of fellow ECM alum Nik Bartsch’s Ronin in how Vallon establishes a blissful groove and builds the melody out from there.

Moret’s bass is often the piano’s shadow, even when it, in fact, leads the way. Rohrer’s drums keep a satisfying patter like falling rain on the rooftop, but it’s his economical use of other percussion that enriches the album with dynamic textures. The near symbiotic relationship between cymbals and piano flourishes, accentuating one another’s finishes without being melodramatic, maintaining a tastefulness to the embellishments so that it sounds organic to the composition, natural to the flow of the song.

The Colin Vallon Trio does More with Less without shortchanging the listener one single note. It’s an album of outstanding beauty and taste.

Released on the ECM Records label in 2011, and one of the year’s best.

Jazz from the Bern, Switzerland scene.

The music of multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick should be much busier.  Bouncing from guitar to strings to keyboards to horns (to name a few), and shifting from folk to classical to indie pop to ambient drone (to name a few), the expectation is that the end result would be music with so many moving parts that its main appeal would be as a spectacle of incomprehension.  But the thing of it is, he finds a way to fuse all of these disparate elements into a cohesive cloud of serenity.  And those disparate elements?  They’re all there, but masked in subtlety and hinted at just enough for the ear to pick up on them without ever feeling overwhelmed.  This is beautiful music, with a densely packed emotional center.

Let’s talk about that music.

The album opens with “A Snowflake”, a gentle wash of strings and sparse piano.  The song’s opening statement would imply a long gentle bit of ambient.  But then keys and strings pick up the heart rate, and the song begins to sway with more life.  There is a sense of gradually gaining elevation, until it evens off and drifts away with some soft dissonance through odd effects and percussion.

Second song “Floating/Sinking” opens with (what sounds like) field recordings of birds chirping in the trees and boots crunching along a trail, while piano meanders in the background.  Strings enter cautiously, but chase the birds away.

“Stopping On the Broadway Bridge” opens with a repeating phrase on piano, altered slightly as it builds.  It suddenly drops off into a slightly ominous drone that slowly reveals itself to be field recordings from (it’s assumed) the Broadway Bridge.  Banjo and xylophone pitter patter in the background as strings yawn loud and wide intermittently.  It’s an unsettling piece derived from ambient dissonance.  It elicits a sense of unease and foreboding.  Piano nudges strings and banjo to the background, and ushers the song offstage.

After a brief pause, the song “Another Glacier” opens with the same solo piano, but with a two note repetition.  Strings simmer softly to the surface.  There is a sense of a far and wide plateau of quietude.  Then the volume leaps up suddenly, and when Broderick’s soft voice enters, in duet with another voice, it’s almost shocking in how it arises out of nowhere, and the way that it enhances the peacefulness doubles down on its impact.  When the vocals drop off as suddenly as they arrived, all that remains is the drone of effects.

The combination of “Stopping On the Broadway Bridge” and “Another Glacier” is the high point of an excellent album, and really puts on display Broderick’s talent to do so much with so little.  Outstanding.

When “Something Has Changed” begins with strings and piano, there is already a sense of finality, even though it’s the first of four remaining album tracks.

And though it begins with the theme of string-piano ambience, it ends with effects and field recording voices that seem incongruous to the opener.  But then it blends right into next track “Broken Patterns,” which builds into a vibrant string and percussive interaction that takes off and soars.  The entrance of drums marks its flight, like dust kicked up beneath the flurry of wings.

The album’s final two songs begin with “An Ending,” a pensive piano solo that becomes a pensive duo with strings.  When the album ends with “A Beginning,” the piano and strings rise up in celebration, as if an expression of joy for the music just recorded and a promise of more to come.  It’s the right kind of send-off.  It’s the best kind of goodbye.

While Float could be categorized as an album to play during the quiet moments of the day, that might not be a totally accurate representation.  Float is the kind of album that makes its own quiet moments, that instills the day with serenity, no matter what has come before.  It has an emotional presence that defies the pull of gravity.  It exists on its own terms.  It floats.

Released on the Type Records label, where the album can be streamed in full.

Marking Anders Koppel’s first solo Hammond organ release, Everything Is Subject to Change is an intriguing mix of atmospherics and organics.  Pianist Kenny Werner and saxophonist Benjamin Koppel imbue the music with an austere elegance, whereas Anders Koppel’s organ and Jacob Andersen’s percussion brings an earthy element to the music.  The balance between the two makes for an album that equally engages head and heart.

Your album personnel: Anders Koppel (organ), Benjamin Koppel (saxophones), Kenny Werner (piano & Fender Rhodes), and Jacob Andersen (drums & percussion).

The danger here would’ve been two-albums-in-one:  Half the songs maintaining a groove and bop, and the other half a jazz-classical fusion.  Instead, the organ provides a wintery ambiance when sax is out front, and a gospel warmth when organ takes center stage.

The lightness of the sax is grounded by organ and percussion, and Werner’s piano sometimes gives a subtle lift to the sound and sometimes acts to keep it tethered to the Earth, making for a nifty harmonic pairing.  And though very different sounds, Koppel’s organ and Werner’s piano display a conversant ease that is the glue to the music’s success.

The album opens with a sense of mystery that pulls at the ears, and which would’ve been right at home on any of the recordings of classic world jazz ensemble, Oregon.  There’s some scattered percussion, some welcoming piano phrases, some haunting organ that drifts in and out, followed by the pensive wails of Koppel’s sax.

At times, it sounds like a poetry reading has broken out at a church gospel revival.  Anders Koppel’s declarations on organ trading shouts with his son’s lyrical cadence on sax, while Werner’s piano indulges in clever word play as Andersen repeatedly builds tension with gradually rising tempos to get ‘em up out of their pews.

Werner’s presence doesn’t change much throughout the album, never breaking out ahead of the pack, but also never trailing behind.  This provides a steadying presence that is a big contributor to the album’s surprising cohesion.  Even when he switches to Fender Rhodes, he brings the same elegance as with piano, the primary contrast being the brightness of the Rhodes against the piano’s stark beauty.

Benjamin Koppel has a signature sound on sax.  He is active in both Jazz and Classical fields, and he seems to have found the ideal ratio of those two genres to reflect in his playing.  His music possesses a meticulous precision and an emotional impact, a pairing that he brings successfully to any project he’s involved with.

Strongest track on the album is “What Seas, What Shores,” which has the quartet’s instruments fused at the hip and results in some dramatic moments of spooky groove and jazz avant-drone.  Anders provides a bass harmony to Benjamin’s sax as it drifts searchingly into the heart of the composition.  Anderson begins with nighttime percussion of sudden bursts of sticks and chimes, then, like the rise of of the sun, uses drums to build a simmering heat just below the surface of the music.  Werner’s piano lines dart between the notes of the other three, his presence only sometimes heard, but always felt.

Everything Is Subject to Change is a potent mix of elements that fuse together successfully into an album that bursts with life as it drifts from one moment of serenity to the next.

Released on the Cowbell Music label.

Jazz from Denmark.

Don’t believe the opening notes of Lama‘s Oneiros… they’re a lie and they’ll steer you the wrong way.  The pronounced bounce and charge of trumpet and bass is like a doorway into a confused Ringling Bros. tent.  It’s the opening statement to both song and album.  It says, hey, this is what it’s all about.  But it’s a lie.  Because after the first 30 seconds, the carnival packs up and leaves town, and all that remains are long beautiful trumpet calls, low and serene, over a sea of electronics and gentle rhythms.  It’s a dramatic moment on a dramatic album.

Alguidar by lamatrio

Your Personnel for this album: Gonçalo Almeida (bass), Greg Smith (drums), Susana Santos Silva (trumpet).  They all chip in on the electronics.

The tempo and volume pick up on that first tune, then shift back down to staccato bursts of uneven sound, but Smith’s brushwork keeps it tied back to the serenity that grows distant on the horizon but keeps barely in sight.  It gets one to thinking they know where they stand on this album.

Keep your eye on that horizon, because the serenity is coming back.  Hard to see it, but the thump of solo percussion foretells of its arrival, and the long strides of bass give credence to the promise.  Santos returns with beveled notes that rise up and down at odd angles.  Electronics swirl about her like desert wind.  It appears that all is right with the world again.  But don’t believe that… it’s a lie and it’ll steer you the wrong way.

Oneiros is a name for the lord of Dream, and even in the most mundane of dreams, nothing is like it seems and nothing stays the same way for very long.  And for this, Lama has most certainly not recorded a mundane dream.  Sometimes it’s a spy story as with the suave “Dr. No”, and sometimes it’s an animated animal journey like the chipper “Overture for Penguins”.  Don’t miss the firefly waltz of “Melodia Minúscula,” especially not after the naked-in-the-high-school-hallways nightmare of “My Fucking Thesis.”

The chimp who taught men how to cry by lamatrio

The album ends as it began, with the unnerving bounce and charge dispelled by a serene slow-build of benign tension.  And as before, the electronics whip around, now with more bite, perhaps in anticipation that the dream will soon be over.

Thankfully, once ended, recapturing it is as simple as pressing the play button.

Oneiros by Lama is a 47 minute recording of modern jazz, released on the excellent Clean Feed label, who has time again proven themselves unafraid to take chances with challenging recordings.

The last time Bill Frisell recorded an album with the 858 ensemble, things were a bit noisier.  The 2002 recording Richter 858 had Frisell substituting jet engines for amps, and let the compositions not so much speak for themselves as growl and roar.  Sign of Life shows that there was a heartbeat just behind all the fury and fuel of Richter 858.

Different sound; same ensemble.  Bill brings his incomparable voice on guitar, and long-time collaborators Jenny Scheinman on violin, Hank Roberts on cello, and Eyvind Kang on viola.

As with any inventive musician, Frisell’s sound has evolved over the years.  His current phase is often referred to as Americana Jazz, a blending of jazz aspirations and conventions within a folk framework.  Sign of Life fits snugly into that label, comparable to other recent releases like the excellent Disfarmer, the perfectly acceptable Beautiful Dreamer, and the under-the-radar All Hat.  It’s an album of languid back porch tunes, of foreboding compositions echoing over desolate Appalachian trails, of lush stringed instruments that is alternatingly soothing, threatening, and transcendent.

858 Quartet

Two tracks from Sign of Life…

Good string ensembles force the absence of drums and percussion to go unnoticed, but the best ones provide their own percussive elements and make the issue of absence a moot point.  Frisell’s 858 quartet falls under the latter category, and it’s one of the many admirable traits of this album.

Two criticisms I can see getting leveled at Sign of Life:  One, it’s not jazz, and two, it sounds like most of the stuff he’s done lately.  As to the first point, I really don’t care.  Seriously, I just don’t feel like getting into some territorial pissing contest over what jazz is and isn’t.  Quite honestly, I can see both the big-tent and small-tent sides of the argument; it’s just not an argument I’m interested in entertaining on an album review.  Mostly I just care if an album is inventive and beautiful and fun to listen to.  It hits all those notes for me, so I’m moving on.  As to the second point, yes, it does sound like a lot of the albums Frisell has put out lately, and for that, I’m glad.  There was a stretch of time where Frisell’s sound varied dramatically from album to album, and it always left me wishing that he hadn’t moved on to the next sound so soon, that he had spent more time exploring that current sound, took it in several different directions, investigated all of its different facets.  Well, it appears I’ve got my wish. 

Sign of Life does sound like many of Frisell’s other Americana Jazz albums and yet it doesn’t.  When I feel like listening to a Frisell Americana album, I’ll have several to choose between, yet there will be a time and place for Sign of Life, just as there is a time and place for Disfarmer and All Hat and Beautiful Dreamer.  And for the record, it’s sizing up to be that the time and place for Sign of Life will be in the afternoon, when that damn winter sun starts dropping in the sky waaaay sooner than it ought to and way before I’m ready for nighttime to drop the curtain over the view from my writing room.

When talking of the best jazz releases of 2011, it certainly deserves some votes.

Sign of Life clocks in at just under an hour of music that’s sometimes peaceful, sometimes introspective, sometimes joyous, sometimes ominous, but always beautiful throughout.  Released on the Savoy Jazz label in 2011.

Here’s a link to the Frisell site’s radio, which streams the first 5 songs from the album.

Here’s a link to Bill Frisell’s site where you can watch a making-of-album video.

Here’s a link to the Savoy Jazz site, where it appears to have pretty much the same content on the Frisell site, but some additional news.

STORMS / NOCTURNES – VIA

Names have power.  It gets to where it’s difficult to distinguish whether the name is derived from identity or if identity is formed from the name.  Storms/Nocturnes, the ensemble name taken by the trio of Geoffrey Keezer (piano), Tim Garland (reeds), and Joe Locke (vibes) illustrates that fuzziness of origin.  They have created an album awash in dreamy melodies and rhythms like the fall of rain. 

Places have power, too.  They have their own identity, which can alter our perceptions just as we affect them by our presence.  The album VIA is a recognition of that geographical interaction.  Within the liner notes of the album are photos and reminiscences by the artists of places that each tune drew inspiration from.  It is a guided tour of the album’s music, just as the music colors the perception of each location’s photo.  It creates an odd circle of interpretation, but it’s a logical approach to such an unconventional album.

A trio of piano, vibes, and reeds isn’t the typical jazz line-up and the compositions themselves don’t evoke daydreams of 1940s Minton’s Playhouse, and yet the end result is an album of sublime jazz music.  Seven years since their last album, the trio’s ears show no rust to the receptiveness of one another’s sound.  Locke’s vibes light the path with bright runs, while Garland’s sax soars overhead and bass clarinet burrows beneath Garland’s fluttering piano.  A beautiful album by jazz vets at the top of their game.  Released in 2011 on the Origin/OA2 label.

*****

TOADSWART D’AMPLESTONE by TIM CONRAD

Conrad’s Gothic tale of revenge and the occult was originally printed in the monthly science fiction fantasy magazine Epic Illustrated back in 1986.  Unfortunately, the Epic company folded before the serialized version of the story reached its end.  In 1990, however, Eclipse Books was kind enough to collect the story in graphic novel form before they, too, went under.  Drawn brilliantly in black & white, the shading imbues the shadows with an oppressive foreboding while simultaneously giving a comforting warmth and brightness to the fireplaces and torches that fight back the shadows and to the daylight that occasionally cuts through the gloomy medieval countryside. 

Shamshadow, a traveling artist arrives one stormy night at d’Amplestone castle seeking employment.  His timing is excellent,  as it was merely a fortnight ago that the previous artist had thrown himself out his studio window to his death in the courtyard below.  Prince Waxwroth hires Shamshadow without fanfare.  The Prince’s son’s investiture is near, and family portraits will be made to celebrate the boy’s ceremony into manhood.  Toadswart, a dwarfish hunchback and the Prince’s servant, observes the odd coincidences and strangely detached behavior of the participants with suspicion and fear.  Something isn’t right.  But then again, nothing has been right since the King suddenly went missing.  And there is much to worry about.  Spies have been reported, and there are rumors that armed forces have been amassing in the hills.  The Princess, Waxwroth’s wife, has taken sick, and it may or may not have anything to do with the nights Waxwroth has been spending in the castle dungeon reading arcane tomes.  Toadswart assists the artist in getting settled and acquainted with the castle.  Shamshadow begins the royal family’s portraits.  The leaders of the castle garrison search for spies and prepare for war.  The Princess lies sick in bed.  Prince Waxwroth is in the basement building a golem.

Toadswart d’Amplestone is a 104-page black & white graphic novel, Gothic mystery.  It pairs quite well with Storm/Nocturne’s VIA.

*****

BEA – a Cat that needs a home

Bea is a female, domestic short-hair.  She has white fur with black spots, much like a feline cow.  She is approximately two years old.  She was pulled from a local shelter when her name was placed on a euth list.  She has been in a variety of foster homes, and is looking for a permanent place to lay her water bowl. 

Bea is very sweet, but can be a bit bossy, too.  She will let you know when it is time to pet her.  She doesn’t want to be scooped up like a little baby, but she will sit in your lap for hours and will never require an invitation to curl up with you in bed.  She sleeps like an angel in a ray of sunlight, but she also gets her night crazies and chases after her tail.  Bea would prefer to be the only cat in the house.  She has been spayed, is up to date with her shots, and is negative for feline leukemia.  She should probably remain an indoor cat, but would probably thrive outdoors, too, under the right conditions.

More information on Bea is available at the Mercer (KY) Humane Society at (859) 734-9500, mercerhumane.com.  If you are unable to adopt, you may sponsor her adoption, or the adoption of any cat, by contacting the office.