Back in the 1990s, well before EDM made inroads
into mainstream popular culture, the European electronic music scene was
something that any musician with open ears was paying attention to. Rock and
pop musicians were (sometimes reluctantly) getting remixed by famous electronic
producers, DJs were becoming superstars, and so forth. So where better than
jazz, a syncretic genre that is always taking in influences from the entire
world of music, for this to take an early and lasting root? And who better than
Nils Petter Molvaer, a Norwegian trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist (he’s also
credited here with bass, sampler, treatments, guitar, and percussion) born in
1960, to cotton to the sounds his generation of European musicians were making
and find a way to make it blend seamlessly with his kind of jazz?
Of course the music is not without precedent.
It’s easy to point to Miles Davis’ similar groundbreaking experiments in the
1970s that fused jazz improvisation with popular rhythms to the consternation
of the jazz establishment, or the worldly ethno-ambient records that Jon
Hassell laid down in the 1980s (both with and without Brian Eno collaborating).
But Molvaer is doing something different - the rhythms are frequently based on the
then-contemporary dance beats of the drum & bass scene, but they're less
aggressive than what Miles essayed on an album like On the Corner, venturing frequently into ambient territory. And
where Miles played with a muscular assertiveness and Hassell drew on Middle
Eastern tonalities for his treated trumpet sounds, Molvaer is somewhere else
again, playing it cooler than Miles, with shorter phrases than the runs of the
Miles of the early 70s, but also playing around with the rhythm a lot, not as
much in the abstracted territory of sound that Hassell sometimes occupies. And
though maybe I’m putting too much into it by associating his cool middle
register tones and subtle phrasing with his Norwegian island upbringing, the
record often fits the image of a chilly Scandinavian landscape – but certainly
one where you can find Miles Davis albums to listen to.
The album kicks off with the title cut which
fades in slowly, leading with a melodic line from the guitar that is then
answered by Molvaer’s trumpet. A sampled bass thump plays in one channel while
a more acoustic-sounding bass (also sampled) interlocks with it in the other. Percussion
(performed live, not sampled) is light, fast, and skittering, right in the
wheelhouse of the drum & bass music of the time, playing it both fast and
slow simultaneously, though considerably less heavy than the real stuff. With
the rhythmic groundwork laid, Molvaer’s trumpet and Eivind Aarset’s guitar
trade solos mostly in a laid back, almost ambient mode until Molvaer starts
playing longer lines and using the higher register of the trumpet, at which
point it promptly fades into track two, “Tlon,” which starts mellow as well,
Molvaer’s trumpet cutting like a foghorn through the electronic blips and heavy
bass that surround it. Then guitar, trumpet, and an oddly perfect talkbox start
a dialogue before the beats kick in to very directly link this to the contemporary
electronic music world. But that’s before Morten Mølster’s treated guitar
creates a squalor that would derail the goodwill that had been generated by any
DJ playing this to a crowded dancefloor.
And so it continues, bouncing between more
contemplative numbers like “On Stream” with its trumpet, bass, and mellow
guitars over sampled percussion performing the most plainly lovely thing here,
and songs like “Access/Song of Sand 1” or “Platonic Years” which start out quietly
before rhythm starts to move to the fore and push the guitars and trumpet into
more rhythmically choppy waters to match. “Song of Sand 2” and “Exit” close
things out with the nosiest and quietest songs in the program, respectively.
Taken as a whole, this is a
remarkable record, finding a way to take in haunting beauty, propulsive rhythm,
improvisation, and the experimental sound manipulations, and meld them into a
cohesive and entertaining whole. It’s something of a shock that it’s on the ECM
label, primarily known (especially then) for exquisitely recorded small group
chamber jazz, but good for them – it opened up the label to a new audience and
it broadened the label’s outlook on what they could release. Also be sure to
seek out Molvaer’s equally compelling second ECM album, Solid Ether, and then just start exploring – he has yet to put out
a record I haven’t enjoyed.
-
Patrick
Brown
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