German-based duo João Orecchia and Sicker Man are winding and spinning up the sparker dynamo on their Parallax (NO NUMBER) LP for Blank Records, further engaging with the unique conversational approach they’ve been cultivating between each other since 2003, my word. Sicker Man is Tobias Vethake, who happens to be the Blank Records label boss, and I’d forgotten we’d heard his Dialog record in 2021 and noted the large number of side projects this cello-playing Webb’s Wonder is engaged with. Here his electric cello and electronics kit is paired with the bass clarinet puffery and modular-system madness of João Orecchia of Joahnnesburg; seems he feeds his “black stick” through his “crazy boxes” to get the desired results. Plenty of textures and remarkable effects abounding on Parallax, but not much tension or energy. A track like ‘Trash Can Do’ makes an effort to ruffle our hair-dos, but still comes up flaccid and limp. For an album that liberally namechecks Sun Ra, Ornette, and Bennie Maupin, aren’t we entitled to a little more zap in our cocktail? Maupin was of course one of many illuminati who played with Miles on Bitches Brew, besides making his own avant-fusion statements in the 1970s – 1974’s The Jewel In The Lotus is one benchmark. I don’t doubt that Orecchia respects this, but his clarinet has become just one more fabric sample on this comfy sofa. Even so, the rare moments of cello-woodwind interplay do much to confound and delight on this album which is another attempt in the general world-wide effort to merge jazz, improv, ambient and electronica in the same sandwich of caramelized nougat. (01/06/2023)
Norwegian bass player Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard may have blocked out a flower-bed for his exploits on bands like Ich Bin Nintendo and Monkey Plot, the former a large and crazy free jazz behemoth thing noted a few times in these pages, but here he comes into his own with solo album Hibernacle (MOTVIND RECORDS MOT20LP). Well, not 100% solo as he did invite drummer Dag Erik Knedal Andersen to “stick” on a few tracks, likewise Jan Martin Gismervik from Wolfram Trio and Oker “tubs it up” on three tracks, but mostly we’re getting the “hot asphalt treatment” from Nergaard with his bass, guitars, fiddle, drum machine, sampler, and pianos. In his try-anything spirit, he invites both electric and acoustic instruments into the fold, building a space where amplified and non-amplified devices may roam free. While Hibernacle isn’t quite the feast of decayed free-noise splutter that is promised by opening slug ‘Antenna’, we still found plenty of adventure for the taking in his open-ended experiments, his forays into lunatic overdubbing and (hopefully) unscored manic attacks. He even finds time to please the suit-wearing quantity surveyor audience also, with his occasional dips into sweet’n’tasteful jazz melody hooks, served up with major-seventh chords, yet. This croink-en-stein mash-fodder might not be as “primitive” as he thinks it is, nor is it truly “outsider art-rock”, but he achieves the “hi-fi versus lo-fi” conflict which the press note promises with these enjoyable distorto-romps. Vinyl pressing it do be. (01/06/2023)
Swedish player Kajsa Magnarsson here with her solo divertissement which she calls New Age Sound Aesthetics (OUTERDISK OD 21212), and she did all the instruments, composition, and even sat in the producer chair, vacating it just long enough to allow Kajsa Lindgren to jump in with a “creative final mix”. New Age? I thought this was a 1980s genre of product which had long since been discredited, associated with “relaxation”, “mood swings” and “healing motions” rather than musical creativity, but it might be the entire genre is now up for rehabilitation in today’s anything-flies world, in which case the Wyndham Hill back catalogue might start to go up in price at record fairs. However, Kajsa Magnarsson is determined to take us in a direction that involves both yoga and levitation, actions which we might associate with the five Tibetan rites; the idea is that, within these seemingly tranquil musical environs, multiple worlds are concealed. I’m almost prepared to believe some percentage of this, as these seemingly-benign and deceptively simple tracks might have hidden deeps, can sneak up on you like a scuttling insect, and leave more of an impression than you might expect from such low-key, wispy, tuneless murmurings. Particularly good is the six-minute ‘Meditation’ with its array of floaty voices which might carry the keys to the kingdom in their de-natured tones, as they swarm over a not-unpleasant keyboard drone with no real centre of gravity. Kajsa Magnarsson also does films and sound art installations, and is a member of the Föreningen Svenska Tonsättare society for composers. She has done much work for championing women and trans composers in Sweden. She also made a record with Marta Forsberg for the Lamour label in 2022. (01/06/2023)