The Whole Point Of No Return

Here is a stop motion animation (by Tom Nihiski) for the Paul Weller penned track "The Whole Point Of No Return", taken from Robert Wyatt´s great album "Shleep" (Domino 1997).

Robert Wyatt:trumpet and keyboard.
Chorus: Alfreda Benge, Jamie Johnson, Charles Rees and Robert Wyatt.

Now buy the album, please! How about a beautiful double vinyl edition released by Domino in 2008?

Maja Ratkje live at the River to River Festival

EX-SITU: MAJA SK RATKJE from OMW on Vimeo.

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, Ex-Situ at the River to River Festival, NY, July 2013.

More info on Vimeo.

By The Waterhole

By The Waterhole is the German-turned-Bergen artist Eva Pfizenmaier.
Her debut solo album "One" was released in November 2013 on PlayDate Record, and I have played it regularly since I got it earlier this year.

What we get here is Eva´s voice along with some keyboard and effects, adding a nice touch to the songs that may in the style of singer-songwriter, art pop or whatever. On PlayDate´s Bandcamp site we may read that her "influences range from pling plong music to alternative pop, from contemporary music to good old fashioned blues", and that sounds reasonable too.

Call it whatever you like, it´s a very fine album. Have a listen to one of the more melancholic tracks "Then and There" here in the blog, or run on over to PlayDate on BandCamp to listen to all of it, before you buy it for next to nothing.
The lyrics may be studied here.

The Søren Andreasen remix of "Then and There" is not on the vinyl version (only for sale at concerts?).

Co-produced and mixed by Stephan Meidell and mastered by Jørgen Træen.

Jü and Kjetil Møster

The Bergen sax man Kjetil Møster (solo, The Core, Ultralyd, Datarock etc. etc.) has been to Budapest to play with the "experimental psychedelic free rock whatever trio" Jü.

They played at the A38 venue (December 2013), and it sounds like it must have been a rocking show.

The videos in this post are two out of four from neuigkeiten, and they have some interviews too (in English and Hungarian).

Another video here, lasting almost 20 minutes.

On Jü´s Facebook it seems like an album might be on it´s way.

Let´s hear it for May 1 (again)

1982: "A/B" (Hubro 2014)

"A/B" (Hubro), The fourth album from the trio 1982, is out in record shops (and on digital shops too I hope) tomorrow (2 May 2014).

This time they move a bit away from the folk-improv they have stuck to until now. I only have the CD version so far, but the album is easily recognized as an old fashioned LP with two quite different sides (A/B).

The first track is an eighteen minutes long contemporary classical piece (named 18:16 of course!), where Stian Omenås composed music for five horns, that was overdubbed on music recorded during the sessions for the Pintura album (Hubro 2011). A fascinating and really nice piece!

The 1982 trio is Nils Økland (hardanger fidle, violins, voice), Sigbjørn Apeland (harmonium, piano) and Øyvind Skarbø (drums, percussion).
The extra musicians on the track "18:16" are: Fredrik Ljungkvist (clarinet), Erik Johannessen (trombone), Sofya Dudaeva (flute), Hanne Liland Rekdal (bassoon), Matthias Wallin (tenor horn) and Stian Omenås (conductor).

Even if Sigbjørn Apeland plays the piano too , not only the organ, and Nils Økland sings on one track, the music on "side B" is more like the old folk-improv we all love, and some of it is so beautiful that it almost hurts.

Cover: Elisabeth Færøy Lund / Yokoland.

Buy or borrow this album (and their previous ones), don´t steal.

Taken from Hubro´s site:
"Recently 1982 has also made a recording, not yet finished, with a fourth person. The group will participate in a live project related to animated film, and will compose a commissioned work for NOTAM (the Norwegian Center for Technology in Music and the Arts). The members of the group have also begun thinking about yet another recording project to be completed for the trio’s 10th anniversary in 2017".

Concert and festival organizers beware!

Jazzfestivalen (The Jazz Festival)

May will be one hell of a month for music in Bergen.

We already have Bergen International Festival (21 May - 4 June) and Nattjazz (22 May - 31 May), and now we also get Jazzfestivalen ("The Jazz Festival") (link to Norwegian site) (29 May - 31 May).

The Jazzfestivalen artists are: No Balls, Xavier Querel, Horacio Pollard, Paul Lovens / Thomas Lehn, Consumer Electronics, Jean-Philippe Gross / Axel Dörner, Okkyung Lee, Axel Dörner / Kjetil Møster and Marcus Schmickler / Thomas Lehn.