“Ran Do” comes after the 2014 tour made by the band Møster in the United States, which included a double bill with the American group lead by Ingebrigt Aker Flaten, The Young Mothers. The quartet with Jeff Parker, John Herndon and Joshua Abrams is the direct consequence of Kjetil Møster’s encounter with the Chicago music community, and the approach started on the occasion – the first two are members of Tortoise, the other is the mentor of Natural Information Society. The music inside is somehow extensive of the one proposed by Møster, a pollination of progressive and psychedelic rock elements (with members of the Norwegian bands Motorpsycho, Elephant9, BigBang and Monolithic) with a strong Coltranean influence, but now entering more decisively into post-rock domains and acquiring a more “Americanized” sound. The CD follows a William S. Burroughs notion – «When you cut into the present the future leaks out» – and yes, from those old materials coming from the Sixties and the Seventies something new arises.
Of course, you’ll still find in Møster’s saxophone playing the Scandinavian trademarks pioneered by Jan Garbarek, and also all his commitment to European free improvised music, but very alive is his other interest for the alternative and indie developments of rock and roll, the same that made him to join the bands Datarock and King Midas. Parker and Herndon swim in their natural element, equating abstract textures and groove, and Abrams – here switching his guimbri for the usual double bass – has ample space to conjure his love for the kind of repetitive motifs imagined by Terry Riley and Can. In one word: unmissable.
1 Orko 9:19
2 Dig Me Out 7:31
3 Island Life 2:54
4 Anicca 15:19
5 Pajama Jazz 7:31
