Freshly caught from an island off the coast of Norway, the latest programmatic imagined-landscape fantasia from the tuba wizard and his talented compatriots, with publicity photos looking like a flier for a new, moody Scandi crime drama. This is the core of the band who graced Sage 2 in 2019 and have been rightly lauded for their trilogy of albums Slow Eastbound Train, The Roc and Voyage.
Harbour is an extension of this musical line with Edition Records, rather
than Herskedal’s austere 2020 solo lockdown offering “Call for Winter’,
which won the Spellemann Award (Norwegian Grammy). Here we have a continuous
cinematic vision, blending folk, jazz, classical and Arabic strains – an
uninterrupted line from Persian Gulf to Norwegian fjord – by sea of course.
This version of the band omits the lush viola
playing of Bergmund Waal Skaslien, and initially I feared this would be a
noticeable loss. While Skaslien is hardly a soloist in the mould of
Mahavishnu’s Jerry Goodman, or the remarkable more contemporary Adam Baldych,
he augmented the band’s sound perfectly with swooning legato lines.
Interestingly, I hardly missed him here, as Herskedal effortlessly takes on
both lead and bass lines to compensate, and Eyolf Dale steps up a gear with
achingly wholesome melodic lines echoing and inter-weaving with the tuba.
Herskedal’s tuba mastery and extended techniques
(singing, puffing, swooping) seem to have reached an even higher plane -
literally sometimes, at pitches some trumpeters would be pleased with! But he
never strays beyond artistry into showing off, and the composition, sound and
orchestration are so well executed that you forget the unusual instrumentation.
Supporting and enhancing the virtuoso tuba and piano is the restless and
atmospheric force of nature emanating from percussion maestro Norbakken, who
starred on the recent excellent LAN Atlantico (link).
Standout tracks include The Lighthouse on the Horizon, scion of The Lighthouse on the
2019 Voyage, with gorgeous call and response between piano and
tuba. Hunters Point Drydocks is a
delightful syncopated romp in five, with light as a feather tuba
bass figures. Dancing dhow deckhands is an Arabic romp, an
intricate and multi-dimensional adventure in the eastern soundscapes beloved of
Yazz Ahmed.
Herskedal has pulled off the difficult trick of
further developing and extending his line of conceptually similar albums with
another significant work sitting on the Nordic classical-folk shoreline of
jazz. Very highly recommended – a marine treasure chest of subtle melody,
emotion and rhythmic intrigue, which yields fresh delights at every listening.
Chris K
Release date: 02.07.21 CD, LP, Digital at Edition and Bandcamp.
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