Large Unit from Norway with two new albums, not unrelated…both New Map (PNL RECORDS PNL054) and Clusterfuck (PNL055) were recorded in a studio in Oslo in 2021 and we’re invited to see the brace as twins cut from the same cloth or brothers housed in the same quiver of arrows…I have neglected the exploits of this Norwegian free jazz project led by drummer Paal Nilssen-Love for reasons that are uncharitable if truth be known, but maybe it’s time to revise my mental library and clean my ear-nails for a closer look.
Large Unit have sometimes been the locus for exhausting “energy jazz” blow-bots, and also featured a sizeable number of figures in their crew (hence the name), and indeed 15 matelots have signed up to this particular voyage – look elsewhere for a full roster of names on the manifest, but there’s a hefty amount of brass and woodwind along with harp, accordion, electric guitar, two bassists and two drummers. Full sound – maximal – none of your post-modern minimal doubters here. Interestingly, Nilssen-Love has turned his prow towards that part of the map marked “New Music” and drawn up his charts using methods inspired by John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Cornelius Cardew for these two albums, so in one sense they’re both examples of his compositional skills. For New Map, he used open-form cells – said cells might be reproduced here inside the gatefold – which give rows of notes, prose instructions, and directional ideas for the players, who were called on to respond mustering all their musical puff and falaise. I see rows of notes, numbers, arrows, words with terse instructional suggestions…without knowing any more, I suppose it’s the interaction and overlapping of these cells that give New Map its shape and its heft. Strong results – in places closer to chamber music than strict jazz, and less dense than your average Cecil Taylor composition (I would claim there is overlap here with Taylor’s methods), but that porous quality allows us to hear the individual instrument voices in choice fashion. Large Unit arrive at pleasing combinations and generate a lot of smoking heat and spicy fish; what more could you ask? Lasse Marhaug’s cover designs for this, and the other stalking bear, may draw from the well of Germany’s titan of free jazz, improv and bold typography on his FMP covers, Peter Brötzmann.
The Clusterfuck item also very strong, same format – three pieces from the same method – only this time Nilssen-Love used graphical notation, a method often associated with Englishman Cardew at one time in his career. You’d never have guessed. The prudish Cornelius Cardew would never have countenanced such frenetic playing in his mental conservatoire, not even in the context of AMM Music or the Scratch Orchestra. It’s true that the title track here exhibits many moments of the unkempt wildery which for me characterises the Largesters, but it’s impressive when they switch to the smokier zones and leave yawning gaps in their passages of studied ambiguity and purple soup. It’s clearer on this record (of the two) how the compositional strategies are deliberately evened out with free-form blowing, and the band are allowed to let the dynamite out of the pail. Same qualities as New Map here to enjoy – the unpredictable pairing of musical voices, and the oddness of the sounds they produce – scrapes, hoots, jangles, nothing conventionally “pleasing” to soothe the ears of refined aesthete listeners, and instead delighting in the raw and the crude.
Aye lads, besides upsetting Cardew and his wizened puritanical followers, it’s likely that the meaty fist of Large Unit under PNL’s direction would also sour the cream in Reinhold Friedl’s coffee, as Zeitkratzer are the only European unit I can summon to the table at the moment who might hold a candle to this forest fire. OK Paal, you win! From 28 February 2023.