Windemo & Strid / Wärnheim & Ingves
Split Series Vol. 1
SWEDEN FRIM RECORDS FRIM3 CD (2022)
Another record from the Swedish FRIM label, the free-improvisation organisation that’s been active since 1976 but only recently set up a record label to promote this genre of music. This one’s a split between two duos, although everything seems to have been recorded at the same date in Flykingen.
Mattias Windemo and Raymond Strid play acoustic guitar and percussion, a strong combination of instruments which can’t help but remind us of the 1970s and 1980s work by Bailey and Bennink. Indeed percussionist Strid has played with a number of the big Kahunas of UK improv, including Parker, Guy, and Lytton. They’ve been working as a duo since 2005 and gradually came to the shared notion that they should concentrate on completely free improvisation, and remain totally acoustic. They didn’t make a record until 2018, but there have been a lot of discussions and conversations about music before that. Windemo it seems is more a lover of a jazz and contemporary forms, and of the two he’s the one who keeps lapsing into chord shapes and melodic moments, while the drummer remains resolutely abstract and severe. Perhaps “lapsing” is an unkind way of putting it, as one gets the sense that Mattias Windemo puts a lot of deliberation into his work, weighing up the merits of each note before he releases it into the ionosphere. Their four pieces here are all given elaborate titles referring to an episode in an imaginary “garden”, which includes musings about the insects who just want to be left alone, while the more aggressive flowers are trying to assert their position in the beds. An old wooden bench just sits there, ignored by all. To extend that garden metaphor, the noisy stabs of Mattias Windemo can sometimes seem as spiky as a bramble bush, or a bed of stinging nettles, though that might not be the idea. I do like the very “brittle” sound of the recording, and the surface qualities of the creaks, snaps, scrapes and metallic wiry interludes from these two players, all sounds which have their attractions. But I’m not really feeling the passion from these two; they always seem to be holding something back, stumbling in ditches when I wish they’d break into a trot.
The second duo is saxophonist Marcus Wärnheim, with the pianist Karin Ingves; their sole piece, 21:46 mins, is called ‘Jag Ser Ovädret’, which translates into English as ‘I See The Storm’. The two players here might be relative newcomers, only active as a duo since 2019, and perhaps a generation younger than the above duo, but they already have a long list of credentials and other groups where they perform. I could agree with Peter Margasak’s observation in the notes that their playing is more “fluid” than the stop-start spiky antics of the guitar-drum duo, and their interaction does sometimes result in interesting combinations of long tones and moments where they elect to stay in the same space, exploring a phrase as if scooping out the contents of a seashell using a steel hook. But there’s a certain tentative aspect to their approach, lacking in boldness, which means their explorations don’t carry them very far; not quite enough tension, and not much innovation in their music. If you were expecting a musical “storm” as promised by the title, you might be disappointed by these gently undulating waves of tepid improv. From 21st February 2022.