Slugfield

Prepare yourselves! The slugs are coming! Soundtrack by Slugfield, with Paal Nilssen-Love (drums & percussion), Lasse Marhaug (electronics and turntable) and Maja S. K. Ratkje (vocals and electronics).

The album "Slime Zone" (PNL Records 2012) was recorded during the Oslo Jazz Festival in 2010, and the track titles describe the music well: "Get out the traps", "Remote control mafia", "Slugs for lunch", "Bring´em on" and "Happy after party dance". It´s improv of course, varied, great fun and a bit spooky too. I was expecting some more noise, after hearing them at Bergen´s Nattjazz festival in 2008, then as All Ears All Scars, where they played a killer noise concert. But this one works fine too, just play loud!

I´m voting for the two last and longest tracks here, especially "Bring´em on" (21 minutes), where you can almost hear the snails coming against the gardeners, who are waiting, all armed with lawn movers and kilos of salt.

It may seem like Ratkje and Marhaug have tricked Nilssen-Love into joining the garden society now.

Cover: Lasse Marhaug.

A nice mail to one of the artists, and you may be able to buy the album.

The end of February festival

Let´s finish off this long February with a videofestival. Lots of Norwegians in there as usual, I´m afraid.

The first ones out are Nils Petter Molvær Trio (N.P. Molvær, Stian Westerhus, Erland Dahlen), and then follow Arild Andersen & Paolo Vinaccia, Frøy Agre & Andreas Ulvo and Mats Eilertsen Quartet, all from the documentary "Oslo Jazzed Out".

Say hello to Øystein Moen & Stian Westerhus in White, with Susanne Sundfør, recorded at The Henie Onstad Art Center (early February 2012).

And let´s go to Japan for couple of concerts with Dans Les Arbres (Xavier Charles, Ivar Grydeland, Christian Wallumrød and Ingar Zach), first one with Jim O´Rourke, and then Otomo Yoshihide.

"Timezones for trumpet and wood"

Arve Henriksen - Tidssoner for trompet & treverk from Rikskonsertene on Vimeo.

Norway´s tour organizers Rikskonsertene are organizing a tour with Arve Henriksen and strings, called "Tidssoner for trompet og treverk" (i.e. "Time zones for trumpet and wood"). Check out the video, but prepare yourselves for a little bit of Norwegian from Arve Henriksen. During the interview, Henriksen says that ECM invited him to record with strings 6 years ago, so I guess we will see an album with these people in a while.

I´m happy to see from the tour list (of Norway only), that they will end up i Bergen for a final concert during the Nattjazz festival in the end of May.

The travellers are:
Arve Henriksen - trumpet-vocal
Nils Økland - Hardanger fiddle, viola d’amore, fiddle
Gjermund Larsen - Hardanger fiddle, viola, fiddle
Svante Henryson - cello
Mats Eilertsen (not on the video) - bass
Tord Knudsen - video art
Geir Østensjø - sound design

ADA Trio

Peter Brötzmann, Paal Nilssen-Love, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Steve Noble @ Cafe Oto, London, 20th February 2012 from Fabio Lugaro on Vimeo.

ADA Trio is Fred-Lonberg Holm (cello, bass), Peter Brötzmann (sax) and Paal Nilssen-Love (dr).
They have been touring recently, and on the video they are playing at London´s Café Oto, with drummer Steve Noble joining. The Liminal reviews that concert.

I sure hope they will be touring again!

ADA Trio released an album on PNL in 2011, and why not read a review over at Free Jazz, before you go looking for it.

MOPDTK at Bergen Jazzforum

Finally I got to see and hear Mostly Other People Do The Killing in concert!
I know them best from their albums "Forty Fort" (2010) and "The Coimbra Concert" (2011) (the one with the Keith Jarrett cover), and I had realized that they could go wild of course. This is not laid back, wine sipping jazz, but full speed from the word go!

They pretended to not know what tunes they had been playing, and the titles seemed improvised too, but even if it is madness in there, I´m not being fooled (I think!), these fantastic musicians know what they are doing. A perfect Friday, with a crazy mix of circus music, swing, improv and other suspicious stuff, dished out with smiles and an impressive volume (I can still hear the trumpet).

MOPDTK is Peter Evans – trumpet, Jon Irabagon- sax, Moppa Elliott – bass and Kevin Shea – drums (and some electronics and samples).

Jon Irabagon better watch out, or he may end up in rainy Bergen for good! He´s been here several times to play with HP Gundersen and The Last Hurrah!! (preparing a live album also, I think), and is adding flavor on records by local artists Professor Tip Top (link to Norwegian blog post) and Sergeant Petter link to Norwegian review).

Added 26 February: And somebody was filming too!

Pitchfork Weekly

As recently posted, Pitchfork had a great interview with Robert Wyatt, on music and life.
On "Pitchfork Weekly", you may hear a short piece of the interview, where Wyatt talks about Nina Simone and "I put a spell on you".

Peanuts

Hello, I´m just relaxing today. Yes, I know you may get peanuts all cleaned for you, and even salted, but I say cleaning them yourselves add some extra value.
But OK, here are some salt peanuts for you, if you prefer those. (They don´t do intros like that anymore, do they?).

The Thing, Jazz Sigüenza, 2010

The Thing at the Festival Internacional Jazz Sigüenza in 2010 (but new on YouTube).
Paal Nilssen-Love, Mats Gustafsson and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten.

Play loud! Nuff said!

5-10-15-20:Robert Wyatt

On the mother of all palindrome days, 21022012, Robert Wyatt is talking life and music in Pitchfork.

Let´s hear it for Danny Kaye, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Charlie Haden, Stevie Wonder, Charlie Mingus, Björk, Karen Mantler, Peggy Lee, folklore and flamenco!

Now, run over here at once, for:

"Robert Wyatt
The 67-year-old art-rock godhead on the music and stories of his life.
By Ryan Dombal, February 21, 2012".

Kjetil Møster and Alex Gunia

The 300 Acting Spaces kick offs are over, and the series is starting for real.
I promise not to post all videos from this series, even if several of my regular visitors are present.
Check out the tour schedule here.

The video shows a Kick Off concert with Kjetil Møster and Alex Gunia (project organizer).

And talking about Kjetil Møster again (!), I don´t think his 2011 solo album has got much press? "Blow Job" was released on +3dB, and is the second release in a series they call "Music for ONE", where bass player Michael Duch was the first one out. And I must say even the record company is pretty quiet about Møster´s album. Something wrong with the title perhaps?
Try Kjetil Møster´s album, if you can take some experimental sax playing, and why not start with the tracks "No wonder we love" and "Sayonaro"!
Tiger in Oslo seem to stock it.

Zanussi 13 Live

Moserobie already released "Zanussi Five" (2005), "Alborado" (2006) and "Ghost Dance" (2010) by bassist Per Zanussi´s band Zanussi Five (a previous blog post here). Now they are raising the stakes with Zanussi 13! This is a live recording from Nasjonal Jazzscene (Oslo January 2011), and if you want a genre to describe it, try big band free jazz, or something like that. We get Ornette Coleman´s ("Street Woman") and Fela Kuti´s ("Johnny Just Drop"), and the rest are compositions by Per Zanussi.

This is great stuff! Listen to a couple of tunes over here:
Zanussi 13 Live-Body and Zeuhl
Zanussi 13 Live - Amorous Parade

And just check out the list of musicians before you run on over to your favorite music shop:

Eirik Hegdal – Baritone sax / clarinet
Klaus Holm – Alto- and baritone sax / clarinet
Mikko Innanen – Alto sax
Per Oddvar Johansen – Drums
Martin Kuchen – Alto sax
Jonas Kullhammar – Tenor sax
Jørgen Mathisen – Tenor sax/clarinet
Kjetil Møster – Tenor sax, clarinet and percussion
Gard Nilssen – Drums
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm – Alto sax
Stian Westerhus – Guitar
Per Zanussi – Double bass

300 Acting Spaces acting

If you happen to be in Oslo, Berlin, New York, Beijing or Tokyo, watch out for 300 Acting Spaces, a project offering 300 free concerts of improvised music (previous blog post).

The video shows Maja Ratkje and Lasse Marhaug in Oslo 16 February 2012.

Robert Wyatt: Local Hero

The Wire published a fine interview with Robert Wyatt in 1997 (#163), and now they have put it on their web site. Thanks!
Interviewer: Biba Kopf.
Photographer: Michelle Turiani.

"I love major chords, I could just go on and on, play C-EG on an organ and just hold it. I do like the basic alphabet of the common musical language, as much as I like what has been done with it, which is why I have never abandoned it to just become an explorer of new music. So there are a lot of people I would never ask to play on my records, because I know that they would feel uncomfortable with chords that have been dealt with" (RW).

Moldejazz 2012

The Molde International Jazz Festival is happening 16 - 21 July this year, and some of the artists were known today.

Jon Balke will be Artist in Residence, playing 5 - 6 concerts, and John Scofield Hallowbody Band, Wayne Shorter Quartet (with another drummer than on the video) and Susanna Wallumrød/Giovanna Pessi will be present.

More to come!

The Death Defying Unicorn

"Motorpsyho and Ståle Storløkken present The Death Defying Unicorn. A fanciful and fairly far-out musical fable. Featuring Ola Kvernberg, Trondheimsolistene and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra" (Rune 2012)! No less!
Let´s just spill it, this is a prog opera (to be performed at the Norwegian Opera this fall), with a "libretto" inspired by books written by Owen Chase, N. Philbrick and Patrick O´Brian.

Motorpsycho is Kenneth Kapstad, Hans Magnus Ryan and Bent Sæther, and this time with Ståle Storløkken (keyb, composer, arranger) as important part of the group. This work was originally performed at the Molde International Jazz Festival in 2010 (commissioned work), but this is a quite different version, with quite a gang of musicians involved!
We have the strings of the Trondheim Soloists, the horns of the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra (Kjetil Møster, Hanna Paulsberg, Klaus E. Holm, André Roligheten, Mathias Eick, Eivind N. Lønning, Mats Äleklint and Kristoffer Kompen), and not to be forgotten, Kåre Chr. Vestrheim (mellotron ++) and Ola Kvernberg (violin).

The album has received rave reviews here in Norway, and everybody seem to agree that this is the big thing. To me it may be just a little bit too big some places, but let me admit, I am the kind of guy who has sold off all my Yes and Rick Wakeman albums long time ago. That may not have been very smart, because it seems like prog is back. Better prepare for a punk revival in a year or so.

If you are into prog, get it right away!

My favorite tunes: "Through the veil", "Mutiny!" and "Into the mystic".

Cover design: Kim Hiorthøy.
Illustration: Thore Hansen.

Videos from All Ears

steinerik1954 just uploaded some interesting videos on YouTube.

Here are a couple from the All Ears festival. First out is Lol Coxhill, and I still regret I didn´t go to Oslo to see him in 2007. Then come Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Paul Lytton, who I got to see in January this year. And they were SO good, taking the floor (no stage for them) around midnight, the final evening of the festival.

The Guest List

Not that much news on Robert Wyatt these days, so I´ll just steal his playlist published in Mojo no 220, 2012 (p.104):

Ken Colyer: "Blue Blood Blues"
Double Six Of Paris feat. Mimi Perrin: "Naima"
Vintage Brasil feat. Monica Vasconcelos: "Rei Morto, Rei Posto"
Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse: "Body And Soul"
Duke Ellington: "Things Ain´t What They Used To Be"

Steinar Raknes

Killing The Blues by steinarraknes

We haven´t had too much country and americana in this blog, have we? Well, some of you may even think that anything on these genres would be far too much, but stick with me for once!

Here we go with Steinar Raknes´ version of "Killing the blues" (Rowland Salley). I know bass player Raknes mostly from his work with one of Norway´s hottest jazz bands (at least some years ago it was), The Core, but he has recorded tangos and sami music too. This time he went over to USA to record the album "Stillhouse" (out soon), that probably has more of this kind of music?

On "Killing the blues" he is joined by Solveig Slettahjell (vocal) and Mickey Raphael (harp), and now you may start comparing this one with the numerous other versions of this song!

Klangkammer 1

I have mentioned the Norwegian trumpet player Stian Omenås a copuple of times here (with Stian Around A Hill and Lille Stille), and now he´s back with a new and fine album called "Klangkammer 1" (NORCD 2012).
He is joined by Rob Waring (vibraphone), Mats Eilertsen (bass) and Erik Nylander (drums) on this release.

On the album there are compositions and sketches for improvisation by Stian Omenås, and a tune by Mats Eilertsen (check out his new album too). In the liner notes Omenås writes that he wants the music to be chamber music, where the room they play is also some kind of musician.
Yesterday they played a great concert in one of Bergen´s best venues for acoustic music, demonstrating just that.

The album is available on iTunes and eMusic.

The Thing: Mono

The Thing are here again, with another album called "Mono". Yes, it is recorded in mono, and was released by Smalltown Superjazzz towards the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012 (you don´t always know with that company, but it says 2011 on the cover).

On their previous records they have had guests visiting, but here they are back to the original three: Mats Gustafsson (sax), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (b) and Paal Nilssen-Love (dr) (watch them "on tour" here!).
This is tough enough as usual, and with some more relaxing moments in between. On "Mono" we get the folky "Bruremarsj" and the sad "There is Shitloads of Red Meat Missing" (!). The last title is of course a nightmare for the meat eaters of The Thing, usually performing in Ruby´s BBQ Ts.
Yes, you have to get this one too! Four band compositions, one tune by Paal Nilssen-Love ("Viking", not Stavanger´s own football team I hope??) and "Alfies Theme" by Sonny Rollins. The album clocks in at only 35 minutes.
But how about the sound fanatics (I´m relaxed), do they like new mono recordings?

Cover design: Rune Mortensen.

Winter in Trondheim

Terje Isungset (ice) and Lena Nymark (vocal), with The Trondheim Solists at the Olavshallen (Trondheim) 20 January 2012. Larger video and more info here.

Now put on your mittens and visit Isungset´s blog.

The Megaphonic Thrift

I just have to post Beehive´s video for the Bergen based band The Megaphonic Thrift´s "Moonstruck", taken from their new eponymous album (Neues Records/Tuba, 2012). International release on Club AC30.
This is almost "See Bergen, Donnie Darko style"!

The band is Richard Myklebust, Linn Frøkedal, Njål Clementsen and Fredrik Vogsborg.

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards

June Tabor and Oyster Band were hailed as the best band at the Folk Awards yesterday, and they also got the prize for the best album. June Tabor became singer of the year, while The Unthanks got nothing at all!
I had both The Unthanks and June Tabor on my list of 2011, but the day I wrote the list, I chose other albums. All nominees and the winners: right here.

THE WIRE Salon: An Audience With Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt at Cafe Oto in London 12th April 2012!

"...he will be playing back and talking about selected tracks from his own back catalogue, a unique body of work that includes the first wave English psychedelia of Soft Machine, and a series of solo recordings which combine radical political sentiments with an aesthetic sensibility informed by Vaudeville, 60s pop, modern jazz, Cuban music and more".

Read more over here.

Another video festival for you

1) Commissioned work by Hans Magnus Ryan, Pekka Stokke and Helge Sten.
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo) autumn 2011.
2) Jan Bang, Erik Honoré and Sidsel Endresen. From PUNKT festival visiting at London Jazzfestival 2008.
3) Sidsel Endresen and Jan Bang live, Hexagon, Grenoble 2011.

Ah Pook Is Here

AH POOK IS HERE from STUDIO AKA on Vimeo.

"This 1994 stop-frame interpretation of recordings by the late William S. Burroughs, was crafted around a selection of tracks from the album "Dead City Radio" produced by Hal Willner & Nelson Lyon - and featuring music by John Cale".
Read more over at Vimeo

Director Philip Hunt
Producer Eddel Beck
Music Hal Wilner & John Cale
Produced at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg
Distributor BFI & The British Council

The video is from 1994. News on John Cale to be found on Here Comes The Flood.

Free Will And Testament

Nina Persson (A Camp and ex The Cardigans) performs Robert Wyatt and Kramer´s "Free Will and Testament" in front of a noisy audience in NY 2 February (2012).

Most people probably know the song from Robert Wyatt´s album "Shleep" (1997), but listen to this version from Hugh Hopper and Kramer´s: "A Remark Hugh Made" (1995).
Download from iTunes if you like it.

Les Saboteuses

I´m quite fond of the street art of Les Saboteuses. I believe there are two girls/women letting loose these small animals in Bergen.
I took this photo today, but you may see more over here on Flickr..

Never Mind The Botox

I must admit my fondness for Bushman´s Revenge has been growing. They play some mean rock and roll and jazz and so on.
The trio is Even Helte Hermansen (guitar), Rune Nergaard (bass) and Gard Nilssen (drums, percussion, vibraphone), and they just released two brand new albums on Rune Grammofon.

They cover one artist only on "A little bit of big bonanza" (Rune 2012 CD, vinyl, file) (Sonny Sharroc´s "As we used to sing"), the rest is home made. One of the titles is worth the money in itself (at least in Norwegian money): "Hent tollekniven Ivar, det har stranda en hval", meaning "Go fetch the knife Ivar, we´ve got a stranded whale"!)!
Pretty energetic stuff most of this, but they simmer down in "John Lennon was the greatest man who ever lived" (!).

They play one home made tune on "Never mind the botox" (Rune 2012 vinyl, file) ("Bushman rock"), the rest are covers of Black Sabbath, Ornette Coleman, Bob Hund, The Police, Sun Ra and Black Francis.
I´m still working on Bushman´s Revenge´s cover of Ornette Coleman´s beautiful "Lonely Woman", but the rest get thumbs up.

Cover design by Kim Hiorthøy (surprise!).

Here is a recording from an in store concert at Big Dipper in Oslo (more on YouTube if you like).

Andrew in Drag

New single from Magnetic Fields: "Andrew in Drag".
New album named "Love at the Bottom of the Sea" to be released 6 March.
Video: Scott Valins.
Found it over at Pitchfork.

Kongsberg Jazz Festival 2012

Time to start planning your summer holiday? If you are heading for Norway, the Kongsberg Jazz Festival might be worth seeking out. The festival is happening 4 - 7 July, and here are the first artists booked (in Norwegian, but you will recognize the names?).

Lots of artists well known to the readers of this blog, and my first choice would be: Per Jørgensen (trumpet) with Sigbjørn Apeland (organ, harmonium), Morten Qvenild (keyboards), Morten Skage (elbass) and Terje Isungset (drums).
It looks like Arve Henriksen has got the taste for drumming, after banging them with Supersilent. He will visit Kongsberg with a new percussion trio.
Both of these concerts are in a series booked by All About Jazz.