Despite its dawn evoking slow motion opener, evocative of the first fingers of sunlight across the long-frozen tundral wastes this is, in the main, a free-wheeling, entertaining, even, at times, humorous work. It’s a far cry from the usual intense, immersive, contemplative ECM fare and at 35 minutes, it feels more like an interlude, rather than a full set. It’s a set of works for solo bass and effects pedals with no recorded backing tracks and the sleeve notes clarify that “All the loops used were produced live during the performance.”
On that opener, Peace Universal, Andersen uses a wash of
electrical sound as the bedding for spare bass lines. By way of contrast Dreamhorse opens with a bouncing, jaunty
bass line that Andersen records and plays as a loop over which he runs dancing
lines full of good cheer. It’s a formal dance but brimming with life. I could
almost imagine it as the music surrounding the spinning frocks at a society
ball in Bridgerton. Three pieces that
don’t fit comfortably together, namely Albert Ayler’s Ghosts, a Norwegian folk
song, Old Stev and Andersen’s own Landloper make up the longest piece on
the album and it works because of the contrast. The haunting Ghosts cuts suddenly into the propulsive
folk dance of Old Stev and that, in
turn, changes into the loping, easy groove of Landloper, as if Andersen is saying “I’ll show you what I can do
and have a bit of fun doing it!”
A
Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square brings more good cheer
as Andersen capture the bird in flight in swoop and dive, waltzing and loping
around the main melody line before a bit of deconstruction and a return to the
main theme. Mira is another dance, a
loping waltz, if you can have such a thing, and we close with a pairing of
Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman and
Charlie Haden’s Song For Che, the
latter a much stripped down version from the Liberation Orchestra’s original. Lonely Woman is spare and pleading
slowly building up to a brief, frantic Coleman–esque passage after which Song For Che captures some of the
defiant DNA of the Orchestra but it’s a slow, questing piece, a requiem rather
than a celebration.
Having only really heard
Andersen on a couple of trio albums he made with Andy Sheppard or Tommy Smith
the undiluted focus that this solo album allows makes for a very different
listen and shows that even in those long winter nights Norwegians have a sense
of humour too.
Landloper
is
out now. Dave Sayer
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