![King Crimson - Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (40th Anniversary Edition) (1973/2023) [High Fidelity Pure Audio Blu-Ray Disc]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2024/05/12/138741_front.md.jpg)
Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity – To Whom Who Buys a Record (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:05 minutes | 958 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ODIN
The Norwegian drummer Gard Nilssen is best known for his work with the three-piece bands Puma and Bushman’s Revenge, which put a gnarly twist on jazz-rock, driven by distorted electric guitars. “Firehouse” (Clean Feed), his sanguine debut as a leader, features a trio pointedly named Acoustic Unity, with the saxophonist André Roligheten and the bassist Petter Eldh, two more busy players on the European circuit. (Mr. Roligheten, from Norway, is a member of the improvising duo Albatrosh; Mr. Eldh, from Sweden, works in a trio led by the British pianist Django Bates.) Mr. Nilssen and his partners make a respectable free-bop ruckus, earthy and often swinging. Though it’s a drummer’s band, Mr. Roligheten grabs the ear as a soloist, especially on tenor saxophone, which he plays with a gusty fluency. The tunes are sturdy constructions, and the band muscles through them with a clear grasp of precedent, evoking some Sonny Rollins here, some Peter Brötzmann there — and on the closing track, “Life, Somewhere Before the Exit Sign,” the late-1960s Keith Jarrett Trio.
Read more
Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity – Elastic Wave (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 44:18 minutes | 846 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Acoustic Unity, driven by the stick work of prolific Norwegian drummer Gard Nilssen along with his longtime compositional collaborator and saxophonist André Roligheten and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh, plays explorative post-bop originals that can lean into free jazz or up the tempos and grow agitated, before sliding into a wonderfully melodic slow mode. While the title of the trio’s last album, To Whom Who Buys a Record, was a direct nod to Ornette Coleman and his To Who Whom Keeps a Record album, Roligheten, who can at times sound like John Coltrane, here more resembles a friskier, young Sonny Rollins: short honks, streaking statements and fleet galloping. Recorded at Studios La Buissonne in France in June 2021, the sound, as is usual with all ECM productions, is peerless, natural with wide dynamics and a flawless sonic image. In “Lokket til Jon, og skjerfet til Paul” Roligheten goes low and lazy; beautiful ideas ooze out of his horn as Nilssen sensitively accompanies entirely on cymbals. Showing his versatility, if not virtuosity, in “The Other Village,” the reedist plays multiple horns which do not sound overdubbed, à la Roland Kirk. “Cercle 85,” with Roligheten on clarinet, is the trio at their quietest and most reflective. That’s followed by the jumpy, wryly titled “Acoustic Dance Music.” Both “The Room Next to Her” and “Spending Time with Ludvig” benefit from quotes that are cleverly disguised enough to be maddeningly familiar but unnamable. Although ECM visionary Manfred Eicher’s name does not appear anywhere on the album, which is very unusual, this is yet another example of his superpower of finding and recording sharp, ambitious Eurojazz.
Read more