Torgeir Vassvik is a unique folk singer and guitarist here representing the Sámi, the indigenous peoples who live in Norway, Finland, Sweden and parts of Russia…unenlightened souls used to refer to them as “Laplanders”, a term which is now considered inappropriate. The Sámi are fishers, farmers, and fur trappers; you’ve probably seen them on the telly when BBC Four broadcast The Great Reindeer Migration show (a rare piece of TV which was very long-form and dispensed with any annoying voice-over narration, much to my relief). Your current listener knows next to nothing of the traditions of the Sámi, but today’s record has a lot of experimental adventure and zest along with the folk elements…Juhani Silvola is supplying intense electric guitar licks and heavy strums, the better to showcase the eerie vocalising wails of singer Vassvik.

The growly expressions of the latter may put you in mind of throat-singing, but the combined effect of the duo somehow arrives at roughly the same area as LPs by Dredd Foole or (sort of) Jandek, or any singer who jettisons the restrictions of verse-chorus structure in their songs. The songs rarely depart from a root note and the joy of listening is to be found in the open-ended free-form extemporising of the singer, as he recounts these stories intended to connect the traditions of the Sámi with contemporary modes…so that “the past reaches out to the future”, selon the liner notes. Indeed the term “Joik Noir” has been coined to encapsulate the achievements of this duo, and the “noir” aspect reminds us that the songs are in fact quite turbulent and troubling, and even if we don’t speak the language it’s evident that life is difficult and all is not well on the snowy flats.

Norwegian-Finnish Silvola has amazed us on previous solo outings, such as the astounding Wolf Hour Roundelay which demonstrated his deep connections to ritual and mythic notions, making him the ideal partner for this very special musical adventure. (02/01/2025)

This combo have been producing their brand of music since about 2016, the result of a meeting between Kjell Bjørgeengen and Chris Cogburn. I did not much care for the four-CD release I heard in 2023, but today something seems to be turning me around. It’s very simple slow-moving drone music based on, I think, Cogburn’s notions of “vibrating objects” combined with whatever it is that Bjørgeengen does with his video oscillators. Cogburn doesn’t seem to be playing on today’s record, but Ingar Zach is taking up the cudgels for him with his typical “vibrating membrane” set up, something which I always imagine is about putting a rattling speaker on top of a drum skin. There’s also Aimee Theriot, regular FOTO player, with her electric cello, and a new talent in the team – Inga Margret Aas on double bass. Maybe it’s her acoustic deep register underpinnings that are giving shape and form and depth to what, on previous outings, I have perceived as a rather grey aimless murk.

The Norwegian Kjell Bjørgeengen has been more prominent with the video feebdack on A Thought For Two, when he did it with Keith Rowe. At that time he played the Dave Jones flood coil, which may be related to today’s instrument the Dave Jones Synthesizer. The creators involved speak about things like resonant frequencies, reflections in space, dialogue between artists, sound-and-image representations, that sort of thing; a lot of it is to do with the people involved, but it’s also about making objects speak. Poets also come into the orbit of the humming forces, including an 18th century Japanese poet who provided the title of the release.

All these hopes, fears, and intentions may have surfaced in improvised music across continents over the last 50 years, but it feels like FOTO have arrived at a much more distilled version somehow, daring to be more minimal, paring a performance down to the very bare essentials. Individual musical personalities are downplayed in favour of something quite different, almost transcendent. There’s a weight and purpose to the music which I overlooked before. (19/12/2024)

On today’s spin I’m reminded more than once of the similar odd sound produced by Hans Reichel and his “Dachsophon” or Daxophone, which he invented in 1987 and played on The Dawn of Dachsman, and other recordings. Reichel’s wooden instruments were carefully carved tongues mounted in resonant wooden boxes, but like Hornorkesteret he tended to apply the bow and likewise produced animalistic whines and grunts. Qvale and team also add percussion and some conventional instruments to the mix, but to remind us of their quasi-pagan roots, there are four antler-players in the band, plus the use of bone flute, moose skull and hoof rattle tells us that animals are never very far away – in spirit, and in a very corporeal sense.

I like the way they keep the melodies very simple – if they were rock musicians, this could almost be very rough post-punk riffing or even a form of acoustic Black Metal (which is something they ought to try, in my view), but they can’t help syncopating their rhythms, in an attempt to get us onto their dancefloor and watch us execute a lumbering stomp. When I say dancefloor, it’s probably a charmed circle in the forest with mushrooms and stones and goblins nearby. Elaborate cover art curlicues, emblems and pastoral scenes likewise confirm this “wild men of the woods” image they’re trying to push, as do the charming silhouette pix of the band indicating that long hair and nudity are entry-level requirements if you wanna “blow” with the Hornsters. At the same time, they’re also urban sophisticates who are keen to blend krautrock and minimal-improv moves with their folk-inflected antics. Some nice moments of wildlife field-recording punctuate the tracks, but I don’t think they actually recorded it in the open air. (11/11/2024)

Available in the UK through Cold Spring

I can see the musicians are pleased with stirring up these six “quiet riots” in the studio as they proceed to confound normal musical procedures, yet something fails to cohere for me. There’s not enough structure, no root note for safety, and despite oodles of technique and skill it feels like the players are meandering as they play their conceptual games. It might be something worth doing to lace your cool jazz playing with astringent atonal moments borrowed from 12-tone serialism, but Bill Evans did a much better job of this on his 1971 record The Bill Evans Album, with the well-integrated tone-row composition ‘T.T.T.’. On the other hand, there are moments when Herbert and Mitterer find their way into a mini-maelstrom of alien-ness that confounds their mannered control-freakery for a second or two, at which point the music then becomes kind of interesting. (19/12/2024)

The players are Eva-Maria Karbacher on the saxophones (soprano and tenor), Christian Moser on the oud, and Alfred Zimmerlin on the cello; unusual combination of instruments, and sounds, at least in this genre. I’d love to hear the cello on more improv (and jazz) recordings, and often hanker for the glorious times when Tristan Honsinger played with Derek Bailey’s Company, or Dave Holland’s duet with Bailey, and of course any record with the American genius Tom Cora. Zimmerlin can agitate the group with his sharp plucking actions, or lead them into a mesmerised state with his ambiguous, short bowing stabs. As to the oud work of Moser, I’m far from familiar with the sound of this instrument but if he’s playing one related to the lute family, that might account for these inventive and energetic string sounds, which sometimes have a metallic flavour which isn’t quite the same as a steel-string acoustic guitar, but more resembles a musical version of a tinsmith cutting away with his shears. But I think it’s also providing some form of percussive component too, which adds even more excitement and crazy rhythm to the lively hoot-footed performances. In this context, Karbacher might seem relatively conventional with her very fluid utterances – I’d say a more astringent take on Steve Lacy phrasing, with errant swoops and whooping darts borrowed from 1960s free jazz, but pressed into the pages of a butterfly album with due diligence paid to restraint and grace.

Quite short tracks; a welcome relief from improvising groups who require 18 or 35 minutes to document every nuance of their performances in an unedited start-to-finish manner. All acoustic too; the recording engineer Frank Baumann has been ingenious with his mic placement, and the instruments are as intimate as wild animals approaching you in a forest prior to giving you a good wash with their tongues. Much to admire in the way they leave space for each other, always working hard to achieve the right balance of sounds and actions; but now I’m paraphrasing the observations of Gaudenz Badrutt, who wrote the liner notes and provided a longer version of his hypothesis in the press notes. Well, since an “Umiak” is a boat used by the Inuit, Badrutt builds on the metaphor, making observations about navigation, changing positions, bodies of water, and (inevitably), the “voyages of discovery” made by the trio. The principle to which this boat must adhere is keeping one person behind the rudder, with the others doing the rowing; it’s not crystal clear how this specific dynamic is enacted by the Umiak trio, but the music contains multiple indicators of their success. (28/11/2024)

On today’s cassette Hako (MA RECORDS M 34) it’s one side of the duo with woodwinds and guitar, then another side where they’re joined by the Japanese player Kohsetsu Imanishi and her koto. As before the Czech-German duo adhere to their “strict idiom”, which I have previously taken to refer to a set of rules and parameters that must be respected. This discipline does result in very subtle interplay, and quiet all-acoustic music, but it’s also intensive; Papenheim’s “clicking” noises made on the guitar are understated, but very bold and confident. Wróblewski’s clarinet tone is slightly more conventional, but he deliberately limits himself to very few notes, and injects his purely abstract breathy passages as needed. The duo seem intent on carving out their own corner of minimal improvisation that stands far apart from others.

On the B side, they become a trio with the addition of Imanishi and koto, an event which came about during Karm’s March 2024 tour of Japan. On this occasion, the quiet-and-minimal aesthetic is enhanced – or distracted – by the sounds from the nearby railway at the Hako Gallery. Apart from one Ftarri recording made in 2024, we don’t know a great deal about Kohsetsu Imanishi, but her presence here has made for a mystical moment of improvisatory tension, and her aesthetic approach seems to be very sympathetic to the Karm “idiom”. This particular musical meeting might be a little slow to start up, but at its peak we hear something approximating a sketched-in diagram for a conversation that could lead in several different directions. You can hear the players working hard to keep all the options open, all possibilities on the table.

Issued on a small Czech label, arrived 29/10/2024.

The original Telyn Rawn came out in 2020 – it was played on a horsehair harp, which was built for him specially (requiring a small team of specialists); presumably it’s all part of Rhodri’s plan to reinvigorate Welsh culture and identity through the history of its music, and these historical instruments (as he did on Telyn Wrachiod, where he explored the pegged Bray harp). In passing his original 2020 improvisations to the players on this record, he devised quite specific instructions; they had to imagine that Rhodri’s music was somehow “ancient”, dating from the medieval period, and their response had to be something that took place centuries later. Using prose instructions for directions, interaction, gameplay or role-playing has been used by certain improvising players in history (Chris Cutler, John Zorn, Rova Saxophone Quartet), but Rhodri’s approach is unusual – requiring the use of creative thought, inviting speculation on history, and thereby (we hope) arriving at new insights into the way that music, art, and culture can evolve. It seems less formulaic than just handing out colour-coded cards, or printed with prose updates on Oblique Strategies.

The resulting miniatures here are more than just good music, and the project somehow amounts to something more than an intriguing collaborative experiment; at its best, the album invokes the deeps of musical history so profoundly that it almost allows us to travel through time and space, an impression I personally felt most strongly when hearing Dawson’s ‘A Garden Farewell’, with its gentle off-beat guitar work recorded with birdsong in the open air. Besides guitars, you will also hear the hurdy-gurdy, the recorder, the banjo, the fiddle, the Scots small pipes, the flute, the viola – and even some electronics and computer music. I think this release is testament to the power of imagination. The album presents a fascinating enigma in 18 chapters; Rhodri Davies has enabled and realised a profoundly human and moving statement. (02/04/2024)

Today’s record Augury (UNION FINALE UNI15) is a 100% Geneviève Beaulieu solo effort – she wrote all the songs, sings, plays her acoustic guitar and banjo, did the recording, mixing, and the cover art. It seems she and De La Mothe moved into a more pastoral environment some years ago, and this has been a life-changing event for them. I shan’t say they retreated to a woodland fortress in the manner of J.D. Salinger (who was attempting to escape being noticed), but evidently the joys of nature have inspired Beaulieu to take this acoustic back-to-basics pathway. Her refreshed spirit is also reflected in the lyrics, with imagery largely drawn from the woodlands – trails, fruits, roots, flowers, earth, growing, wells, the seasons, and so forth. Naturally, many of these things and more are taken as signs and symbols for Geneviève Beaulieu’s life journey of discovery.

For those diehards who crave a flavour of the original “menace” of Menace Ruine, perhaps we could suggest they turn to the song ‘Severed Head’; there’s no real violence in the music or melody, apart from the clever shifts into a minor key, but the lyrics are shot through with tasty images of blood, serpents, and nightmares. But even this song is intended as a form of redemption, I expect; the listener is exhorted to have no fear. Very distinctive sound to the record; sharp, clear recording (no ambient fog shadows concealing everything); the voice cutting through like clear air in the sunlight; stringed instruments played with unearthly precision. Even her Quebecois accent, which carries through into her singing voice, has its own unique flavour. (29/07/2024)

Pernice composed this work for a stage play, a contemporary version spoken in French, of the Sophocles tragedy staged by Emma Gustafsson and Laurent Hatat; what we have today isn’t a “soundtrack” to the play exactly, but rather an assemblage of all the music he composed for the production – hence the subtitle “Complete Sessions”. Six actors from Antigone are also credited on the CD, although we don’t hear much from their declaiming voices on the disc apart from a brief exposition on ‘Stasimon 1’; they are also represented by the rather washed-out ghostly images printed on the digipak. The 20 tracks indicate how closely Pernice adhered to the story and structure of the play; they read like episode titles. Interestingly, I see the original tragedy (with which I am not familiar) touches on themes of citizenship and obedience, and how society’s constraints conflict with the individual’s sense of “self”, along with the expected subtexts about families, conflicts, and familial duties (some say that all Greek tragedy is really about the family).

The response of Laurent Pernice to all this textual richness has been to create rather solemn, minimal, and poised music; some of it quite classical in its harmonic approach; all of it conveying deep melancholy and a sense of futility. There’s isn’t a great deal of departure from the central sadness underpinning everything, although the Nyman-like structure of ‘La Lutte’ goes some way to enliven the mood. A bit of me was half-expecting simple “atmospheric” tones to act as a backdrop for the actors, but no – each piece, no matter how short (some are delicate miniatures lasting for just over one minute), has been thought-through in detail, never drifting away into the land of wisps and ghosts, nor filling space with unnecessary padding. We’re intrigued by Pernice ever since we learned of his association with Palo Alto, a French combo seemingly determined to keep the Zeuhl flame burning and extend their complex music into sci-fi and philosophical areas; we enjoyed their album Difference and Repetition: A Musical Evocation of Gilles Deleuze from 2021.

With this record and the Martin Küchen / Angles Kalypso jazz opera, and to some extent the recent jazz LP Medea by Star Splitter, perhaps we’re seeing an emerging rediscovery of the enduring power of Greek tragedy. (22/04/2024)

Emil Bø (trombone) has played with Krise and Oda Steinkpf, Kristian Enkerud Lien (guitar) has played with Laupsa Locomotiv and Circulasione Totale Orchestra, and they’re joined by drummer Michael Lee Sørenmo to create this very refined, often quite slow-moving and underplayed sounding record. They claim to draw influence from UK improv groups, European art music, and anything that takes their fancy in the world of jazz and contemporary minimalism. That last cultural context even extends to insisting on a lower-case expression of their band name. I’d just like to hear ükya engage with other more, say something original, shake more action and get their asses into the groove. There’s potential here for a distinctive contribution to free playing, but they seem overly cautious and precious, each player standing inside their own charmed circle like a statue, not really willing to move outside it.

To be more positive, I like the guitar parts (when audible); Kristian Enkerud Lien it seems has already evolved a very personal rattling-string approach that disguises the natural sound of the instrument, and he stands a chance of growing into a distinctive player. At least he stands out better than the vague drones and puffs of Emil Bø. Despite the ambitions of the title, the record is very deficient in “presence”; the players can’t quite live up to their claim. (22/04/2024)