SOLVEIG SLETTAHJELL | Good Rain | Curling Legs
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This Norwegian percussionist, now based in Madrid, first made his mark as a free improviser (he visited Chicago a couple times in the trio Tri-Dim with guitarist David Stackenas and reedist Hakon Kornstad), but he’s since channeled his energies into abstract sound pieces that follow preconceived structures. His solo record In is a single 26-minute track of muffled clatter and wobbly, resonating drones that steadily builds in density and tension as it progresses. Aside from rolling on what sounds like a bass drum, Zach does very little conventional drumming–instead he bows and rubs drumheads and cymbals, cajoles objects in metal bowls into motion using handheld electric fans, and amplifies a simple harmonium called a sruti box. The resulting body of sound almost seems to breathe.
SIDSEL ENDRESEN | One | Sofa
Norway’s Arve Henriksen, a member of the quartet Supersilent and one of the most distinctive and original trumpeters to emerge in the past decade, recorded with Supersilent bandmates Stale Storlokken (keyboard) and Helge Sten (guitar) for his third solo album. Henriksen has a plush, painterly sound, without any of the acid bite the trumpet is capable of; on his first solo disc he convincingly imitated a shakuhachi, and here he uses a malleable tone that’s remarkably like a human voice. His horn sobs more than it wails, and moves so fluidly from note to note it’s hard to believe it has valves. Henriksen developed most of the dozen pieces here from fragments of old home recordings (some of which he made decades ago, while still in his teens), and they’re all more like studies than tunes–free-floating bits of melody drifting like clouds, changing shape to accommodate whatever they blow into.
OLA KVERNBERG TRIO | Night Driver | Jazzland
