2008, music: Dans Les Arbres
Dans Les Arbres
Dans Les Arbres
ECM, 2008
Xavier Charles: clarinet, harmonica
Ivar Grydeland: acoustic guitar, banjo, sruti box
Christian Wallumrød: piano, harmonium
Ingar Zach: percussion, bass drum
Starting with the list of artists and instruments up there because this is such excellent, well-considered (and well played) group work with unusual instrumentation. This exists somewhere close to both free improv and chamber music, and the instrumentation lends itself to sustained drones and whines as well as rhythmic pulse (never pop anything, however). The quartet is there to truly play together; there are no solo efforts and no flailing spikes, as everything hangs in a close knit, eerie flow. Grydeland plays his strings plucked or scraped, blending with Wallumrød's muted prepared piano and Zach's work on cymbals, while the harmonium, sruti box and Charles' sustained breaths on clarinet and harmonica run so close together that it can be hard to divine the points at which they diverge. Zach sticks to auxiliary stuff; bells and scrapes and rattles, and his bass drum stays soft, low & open. Even that cohabitates with the low end whump of piano, providing an occasional plodding step to move beneath the wobbly tones and flickers overhead. Everything is restrained low and humming, always with a focus on interplay of sound, in a liminal space between pensive calm and menace.