Energy jazz from the trio who brought you NKM019 in 2019, now grabbing that original title Hungry Ghosts and using it as their band name…sax shredder Yong Yandsen is Malaysian, but it’s the Norwegian powerhouse rhythm section who are the only two players in the hemisphere tough enough to slug it out with this particular striped bear from the Kinabatangan River…Christian Meaas Svendsen (philosopher and label boss) on bass and the unflagging Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, somehow finding time away from his non-stop tours and buccaneering big-band projects.
Fans of all-out crazified blat will enjoy track two and the start of track one of Segaki (NAKAMA RECORDS NKM027), both of which scorch the senses with a red-hot flambeau, but today I’m enjoying the moments of respite found on the third track. Yes, we’ll get to the actual titles shortly – it’s a long story. No less frenetic at one level, this tertiary index point shows how the players can tame their powerful forces and compress them into a small glass bottle, much like a Djinn. I especially like moments of Svendsen rattling his enormous double bass with the impatience of a mad civil servant behind a desk. Yandsen on this track (humming and murmuring) assumes the shape of a mythological wind demon, slowly waking up after a long sleep before considering whether to lay waste to Mesopotamia with his mighty lungs. More such instances of this highly dynamic mode of playing – it’s a very advanced form of “laying out”, as the jazz masters like Coltrane and Miles used to describe it on a session – also manifest on the first cut, where we enjoy the shakuhachi playing of the Svendsen fellow where he muses like a philosopher about to make a crucial blocking move in a game of Go. What’s so striking here is that after the whirlwind explosion that opens this track, it’s as though all three of them have forgotten how to drive a bus, and stand around by the side of the road thinking what to do next. I enjoy the tension, personally, and it’s even more rewarding when they start to show signs of life in tentative daubs and dribbles from wet paintbrush (see demon waking up, above) which grow into groaning and howling onslaughts and liberated hoots.
And so to the titles, which make ample reference to vomit, shit, blood, pus, intestines, stink, and decay…adequate enough for me as social commentary on today’s average urban experience after midnight, but in fact they are derived from texts found in Buddhist mythology. Meanwhile the cover art comes from a 12th century screed called the Scroll of Hungry Ghosts. “Part of this music sounds like a forced regurgitation,” suggests the press blurb, which is a rather unflattering way of depicting the sound of free sax honkery. I would suggest that rather our threesome have digested their sources (both musical and literary) with great aplomb and dexterity, and have successfully turned them into energy to fuel their unique art. (05/02/2025)