Friends & Neighbors - The Earth is # (October 2021 Clean Feed Records)

No, Roligheten, Johansson, Grönberg, Strøm and Østvang aren’t newcomers in the Flat Earth Society. They’re stating something much more exciting than a pizza-like world: that the Earth is music, with all its flats and sustains. That music as they love it is the Sixties and Seventies free jazz sound, the one invented by the likes of Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and John Carter. Energetic and melodic free jazz, to be more specific, with simple and suggestive tunes you can sing, as pop or folk songs, but with complex, multi-layered, improvised developments that can go to the extremes of rage and joy. Friends & Neighbors are, as you know by now, a Scandinavian band, but they’re as authentic and hot driven as the real thing, and we only can distinguish them from the music played 50 years ago because they stretch those ideas from the past to the limit and go deeper with the embraced expressionism, in a sort of hyper-realistic approach. Can the metaphor of something be more than that something? Check it for yourself.

1. Halifax 09:02

2. Untitled 06:34

3. Salad Days 02:51

4. The Earth Is # 09:26

5. Father´s Birthday 08:36

6. Sidelinja 03:58

7. Joseph 10:15

André Roligheten - tenor saxophone, flute, bass clarinet and bass saxophone

Thomas Johansson - Trumpet, flugelhorn and percussion

Oscar Grönberg - piano

Jon Rune Strøm - double bass

Tollef Østvang - drums and percussion

Tracks 1 and 6 by Tollef Østvang (TONO/NCB) | Tracks 2 and 4 by Oscar Grönberg (TONO/NCB) | Track 3 by André Roligheten (TONO/NCB) | Tracks 5 and 7 by Jon Rune Strøm (TONO/NCB)

Recorded April 9th, 10th and 111h, 2021 by Dag Erik Johansen at Athletic Sound, Halden, Norway | Mixed by Ingar Hunskaar | Mastered by Fridtjof Lindeman

Produced by Friends & Neighbors | Executive production by Trem Azul | Design by Travassos | Photo by Peter Gannushkin

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Jonas Cambien Trio - Nature Hath Painted the Body (April 19, 2021 clean feed records)

Belgian-born, Oslo-based pianist Jonas Cambien couldn’t have chosen better partners than Andreas Wildhagen and André Roligheten to perform his cleverly constructed compositions. On its third studio album, his trio shows itself as a tightly interacting ensemble, with a free and playful approach.

Cambiens compositions often start with simple ideas, never saying too much or too little, paving the way for collective improvisations that can go from explosive and wild to intricate and dreamy. In that way, the music displays a wide range of moods and types of energy. From the joyful, Ornette-reminiscent ‘1 000 000 Happy Locusts’, to the introspective, repetitive ‘Bushfire’, to the contemporary sounds on ‘Freeze’ that lead up to the stubborn ostinato on ‘Yoyo Helmut’. Throughout the album, the trio is using a variety of sounds and techniques that make the music sound fresh all the way, and full of surprises.

Like the prepared piano in dialogue with Wildhagens imaginative percussion on ‘The Origins of Tool Use’, the animal-like sounds evoked by Rolighetens bass clarinet on ‘Herrieschoppers’, or the organ on the beautiful, deconstructed ballad Helium. On one track, there is no piano at all, but instead a short soprano sax duet played by Roligheten and Cambien, that serves as an intro to the irresistible, trance-like rhythms on ‘Mantis’.

In Jonas Cambien Trio’s world, nothing is out, nothing is prohibited: the music goes everywhere, including corners you weren’t aware of at the start. Unpolished, yet surprisingly accessible, this is free music many will enjoy.

1. Oersoep 00:33

2. 1 000 000 Happy Locusts 05:24

3. Herrieschoppers 03:31

4. Hypnos 01:50

5. Mantis 03:29

6. The Origins of Tool Use 04:58

7. Bushfire 04:34

8. Freeze 07:39

9. Yoyo Helmut 02:51

10. Tongues 01:22

11. Helium 04:05

André Roligheten soprano and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet

Andreas Wildhagen drums

Jonas Cambien piano (soprano saxophone on track 4, organ on tracks 6, 11)

All compositions by Jonas Cambien | All arrangements by Jonas Cambien, Andreas Wildhagen, André Roligheten

Recorded by Morten Qvenild at Ugla Lyd, Nesodden | Mixed by Morten Qvenild at Ugla Lyd and Johnny Skalleberg at Amper Tone, Oslo | Mastered by Christian Obermayer at Strype Audio, Oslo

Produced by the Jonas Cambien Trio | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos

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The Way Ahead - Bells, Ghosts and other Saints (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

The title says it all: here is music conceived under the influence of Albert Ayler, author of seminal free jazz pieces like “Bells” and “Ghosts” and one of the most celebrated interpreters of a gospel hymn specially cared by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Fats Domino, “When the Saints Go Marching In”. The name of the band (The Way Ahead) has the same referential weight: the way to go is in front of us, and you’ll find it while walking, as the poet (Federico Garcia Lorca) wrote. On the back there is history, and beyond you have the unknown. Each direction feeds from the other. The procedure could describe the respect that the present day American jazz has regarding its past, but this septet is Scandinavian, reuniting some of the best musicians active in Norway and Sweden. This explains why “Bells, Ghosts and Other Saints” seems simultaneously so familiar and so strange: the connection to the American jazz tradition is solid, but it comes without a cultural vinculation. As Europeans, Roligheten, Alberts, Barnö, Äleklint, Ståhl, Høyer and Østvang don’t feel the obligation to reproduce the exact parameters of the chosen materials, preferring it´s re-creation. The free jazz paradigm is free from itself, not to refuse it on the process, but to face it with fresh ears. The results are as much intriguing as they’re astonishing.

André Roligheten  tenor saxophone and clarinet

Kristoffer Alberts  alto and baritone saxophone

Niklas Barnö  trumpet

Mats Äleklint  trombone

Mattias Ståhl  vibraphone

Ola Høyer  double bass

Tollef Østvang  drums

Tracks 1 and 7 by Tollef Østvang (TONO/NCB) | Tracks 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 by Andre´ Roligheten (TONO/NCB)

Recorded September 16th 2017 by Marcus Forsgren at Studio Paradiso, Oslo, Norway | Mixed and mastered by Mats Äleklint, Stockholm, Sweden

Produced by The Way Ahead | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos

Friends & Neighbors - What’s Next (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

When a story is good and the following one is even better you naturally expect that new narratives coming next will explode your expectations, and here it is, with a title saying it all about what you’ll find inside: “What’s Next”. And what you’ll find inside is one more aspect of a huge field of possibilities when dealing with the «neo-New Thing sensation», an expression used by the magazine Downbeat to describe what is at stake in a Friends & Neighbors record: a recriation of the free jazz spirit of the Sixties and Seventies, going from Ornette Coleman to John Carter, through Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, but with a perspective very much of the present times (at the end of the second decade of the 21st century is obvious we love melodies, and that’s what you have here: melodic free jazz) and a playing style with all the characteristics of Norwegian jazz. If you know the subgenre you’re certainly aware that free jazz is many different things, so André Roligheten, Thomas Johansson, Oscar Gronberg, Jon Rune Strom and Tollef Ostvang have a wide variety of references to tell their stories, keeping them fresh and surprising, despite all the weight of history. Yes, the Old New Thing is a New New Thing again with these five brilliant and incredibly imaginative cultural recyclers.

André Roligheten  tenor saxophone and bass clarinet

Thomas Johansson  trumpet

Oscar Grönberg  piano

Jon Rune Strøm  double bass

Tollef Østvang  drums

Tracks 1, 4, 5 and 8 by André Roligheten (TONO/NCB) | Track 2 by Jon Rune Strøm (TONO/NCB) | Tracks 3, 6 and 7 by Oscar Grönberg (TONO/NCB)

Recorded February 8th and 9th, 2018 by Dag Erik Johansen and Kai Andersen at Athletic Sound, Halden, Norway | Mixed by Ingar Hunskaar, Oslo, Norway | Mastered by Fridtjof Lindeman at Strype Audio, Oslo, Norway

Produced by Friends & Neighbors | Executive production by Trem Azul | Design by Travassos