Iain Ballamy

Thomas Strønen, Food, Iain Ballamy – Quiet Inlet (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:01 minutes | 795 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Food has defined a new kind of lyrical electro-acoustic improvisation in the course of its twelve year existence. Founded as a quartet in 1998, since 2006 the group has been a core duo of UK saxophonist Iain Ballamy and Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen joined by guests for diverse projects. At the Molde Jazz Festival and the Oslo Blå club in 2007/8 their guests were trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, well known to ECM followers, and Austrian improvising guitarist Christian Fennesz making his label debut. The resultant music, with melodic improvising, trancelike pulses, and shifting clouds of sound is highly attractive.

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Food: Thomas Strønen, Iain Ballamy – Mercurial Balm (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:45 minutes | 972 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

The core duo of Food, U.K. saxophonist Iain Ballamy and drummer/electronic artist Thomas Strønen, initially founded the band as a quartet in the late ’90s, then pared down to a duo in 2006. On their second release for ECM, Mercurial Balm, the duo mixes electric and acoustic material with guest musicians Eivind Aarset on guitar and electronics, Indian slide guitarist and singer Prakash Sontakke, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, and second guitarist Christian Fennesz. These four musicians are all over the musical map but are equally adept at improvisation and intuitively knowing what not to play. Recorded live between 2010 and 2011 at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in England and the Victoria National Jazz Scene club in Norway, with a studio segment that took place at Rainbow Studio in Oslo. – Al Campbell

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Food, Thomas Strønen, Iain Ballamy – Quiet Inlet (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:01 minutes | 800 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

The group Food has defined a new kind of lyrical electroacoustic improvisation since its founding as a quartet in 1998. Now a core duo of UK saxophonist Iain Ballamy and Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen, they are joined by guests as needed for various projects. Following live dates in Norway in 2007 and 2008 with trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær and Austrian improvising guitarist Christian Fennesz, the four musicians headed into the studio to record the highly praised Quiet Inlet, resplendent with melodic improvisation, trancelike pulses and shifting clouds of sound.

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Food (Thomas Strønen, Iain Ballamy) – Mercurial Balm (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:45 minutes | 971 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

The Food team of Norwegian drummer Strønen and British saxophonist Ballamy continues to invite guests to bring something to the table. The form-and-texture conscious improvisations here are drawn from live performances in Norway, England and Germany and studio sessions at Oslo’s Rainbow. To the latter group belong tracks on which Indian slide guitarist and singer Prakash Sontakke is partnered by Eivind Aarset’s atmospheric guitar and electronics. The first half of the album finds Food augmented by Austrian guitarist Christian Fennesz, taking further the experiments with layers of sound begun on “Quiet Inlet”. Nils Petter Molvær joins Strønen, Ballamy and Fennesz for a track recorded at Mannheim’s Enjoy Jazz Festival.

While Anglo/Norwegian musical encounters have recently been on the rise—Norway’s In The Country and Jaga Jazzist, for example, recently discovering respective nexus points with British pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole and the Britten Sinfonia—it’s of no small significance that Food has been exploring trans-national connective threads for a considerably longer time, with its eponymous 1999 recorded debut on British saxophonists Iain Ballamy’s Feral imprint recorded nearly 15 years ago, at the 1998 Molde International Jazz Festival.

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