COMPOSERS: Supersilent
LABELS: Rune Grammofon
PERFORMER: Arve Henriksen (t, elec), Ståle Storlokken (ky, syn), Jarle Vespestad (d, elec), Helge Sten (audio virus)
CATALOGUE NO: RCD 2018 (distr. New Note)
Rune Grammofon is a label that has emerged from Oslo’s highly creative music underground. Taking its cue from ECM, which put Norwegian musicians such as Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Jon Christensen and Arlid Andersen on the international jazz map, it has strikingly fresh cover art created by the young Trondheim-born graphic designer Kim Hiorthoy and impeccably recorded sound.
The artists on the label, which move from Supersilent’s electronic/acoustic jazz experimentalism to musique concrète through to ‘arctic ambient’, are linked by an experimental spirit that lends an unmistakable sound to the label – as if taking the famous ‘Nordic Tone’ and placing it in the 22nd century.
Supersilent appeared at last year’s London Jazz Festival, from where several performances on this album are taken. In essence, Supersilent provides the leitmotif for the whole label; full of electronic sound washes swimming among the hidden currents of technology, it creates a new realm of music and signifiers that constantly melt into new forms and musical shapes.
Connections with a future ECM sound are there to be made – Storlokken performs regularly with Terje Rypdal, Henriksen works with new ECM signing Trygve Seim and Christian Wallumrod while Vespestad has collaborated with Nils Petter Molvaer.
The music is fluid enough not to define precisely any new musical order; rather it is an elusive dance of electronic gestures that is both hypnotic and aesthetically beckoning. Stuart Nicholson