Swedish composer Alex Zethson sure is prolific – maybe aiming to position himself as the Nordic riposte to Reinhold Friedl, another multi-layered composer who makes manifest their willingness to try anything in the name of their art, and will often seek ways to inject new life into any forms which the audience think they understand, only to have their expectations confounded the second they take their seats. Appearing with friends as Vathres on Liturgy Of Lacuna (THANATOSIS PRODUKTION THT28), Zethson goes overboard as he hurls himself and his team down the dramatic gloomoid symphonic-rock pathway, heavily enriched with as many Black and Doom elements as he can inscribe on the page of music manuscript. Members of Dungen, Pain of Salvation, Meshuggah and Cult of Luna all answered the council’s call and threw their gangrenous limbs into the cauldron as they joined the session. I do like the idea of doom rock recast as chamber music, sometimes spliced with classical instruments (the cello of Leo Svensson Sander brings a trace of salt to the tongue-buds of Art Zoyd fans), but the work seems weighted down under its own sense of importance, like an eagle shackled to the mountain by its talons and unable to lift off. The lengthy track titles, more like sentences torn from a Old-Testament styled book of sword-and-sorcery fiction, don’t do anything to lift the mood of oppression. (15/09/2023)
Norwegian jazz layer André Roligheten brings us Marbles (ODIN RECORDS ODINCD9587), an album on which he wrote all the tunes, leads the band, plays tenor saxophone, and did the cover paintings too. The painting on the back cover illustrates in visual terms one of his musical aims with this record, referring to his knowledge of musical history, the playing styles of his compadres who join him on this record, and his interest in contrasting opposites – he sees a fascinating clash between the concrete and the absurd, or between spiritual matters and temporal matters. These structural oppositions are expressed, for him, in the form of planets which stand alone, yet each exert a gravitational pull on each other; from all this mental speculation, you can see why he’s able to conclude “I feel like these compositions are marbles, floating away in a galaxy.” Talk like this, and the planet-themed cover imagery, put me in hopes of a Sun Ra influence on his approach to jazz, but no such luck; what we hear is colourful, lively, pleasant, melodic, thought-through, and played with a good deal of very humanistic expression, but no spinning satellites or spaceships appearing. Bonus marks for bringing a pedal steel guitar (played by Johan Lindstrom) to the session; his work on ‘Pyramid Dance’ (yes, another missed Sun Ra opportunity) adds a spicy tang to the barbecue bucket, but overall it’s an undemanding album. (15/09/2023)
Two Swedish heavy-hitters don their iron gloves and slug it out on Claim (THANATOSIS PRODUKTION THT29) – an album billed as “industrial music” and arriving with a picture of an industrial plant on the cover to prove it. Actually Carl Westholm and Gustaf Hielm (appearing here as Carl 666 Gustaf) come to us from a multitude of musical genres and backgrounds, and have pedigrees in bands associated with metal, doom, and experimental guitar-shreddery for the black zones – Carptree, Avatarium, Krux, Candlemass, Meshuggah, Pain of Salvation, and Tiamat are just some of the names which, if dropped in the right beer cellar, will earn you a bear-hug from any self-respecting Swedish music fan clad in melted black leather and covered with greasy tattoos made of deadly nightshade. Yes, you read right – some of the same names were invoked on Liturgy Of Lacuna above, and like that item the music on Claim is surprisingly bloodless and clean, a shade too professional in its presentation to truly deliver on the intended targets of doomery, cancerous toxic waste billows, and miserable-oppression-concretism. Apparently the duo claim not to be very familiar with synths, digital machines, sequencers and other electronic devices, albeit Westholm is an experienced keyboard player. Yet that’s exactly what they elected to play here, perhaps in a bid to wrench their minds and bodies out of the usual comfort zone (Hielm is mostly a bass player) and arrive at something a tad more “unexpected”. Sadly the gambit didn’t work too well; they haven’t yet learned how to get the best out of these electronic devices. We want more basic riffs, more punchy sounds, less of this elaboration and florid detail. (15/09/2023)