Rodrigo Amado Northern Liberties - We Are Electric (November 2021)

First ever album by this quartet, featuring a much anticipated collaboration with three of the most prominent Norwegian improvisers. Recorded live at legendary ZDB club in Lisbon.

1. Spark 17:18

2. Ignition 12:18

3. Activity 12:30

4. Response 05:24

Rodrigo Amado – tenor saxophone

Thomas Johansson – trumpet

Jon Rune Strøm – double bass

Gard Nilssen – drums

All compositions by Amado / Johansson / Strøm / Nilssen

Recorded by Cristiano Nunes at ZDB, Lisbon, July 11th, 2017

Mixed by Joaquim Monte and Rodrigo Amado

Mastered by David Zuchowski

Produced by Rodrigo Amado

Executive production by Marek Winiarski

Cover photo by Rodrigo Amado

Inlay photo by Rui Silva

Design by Rodrigo Amado and Travassos

PREORDER

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

PREORDER

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

Cortex: Avant-Garde Party Music (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Cortex? No, this isn’t jazz of the cerebral kind – even considering that the approach in “Avant-Garde Party Music” is very much the intelectual one coming from the bebop / hard bop era (when the music seated its users, inviting them to listen and not prioritarily to dance) and approaching our times through the free jazz evolutive line. Avant-garde the music certainly is, but you can still party with it, because this record grooves and swings like hell. Not in the conventional way, of course, but giving a chance to your temptation to shake the body. Having the transitional years going from bop to free as reference, it’s natural that you find on these tracks the influence of what Ornette Coleman did with Don Cherry. But this isn’t as simple as that: Cortex is a Scandinavian band and as such the music has a twist, the same you’ve found before in groups like The Thing, Atomic and The Core: a sort of hyper-realism, turning this jazz born in Europe even more “authentic” than the American original.

1 Grinder 5:49

2 Chaos 3:48

3 Waltz 5:58

4 (If you where) Mac Davis 3:38

5 Disturbanc 4:22

6 Obverse/Reverse 5:01

7 Perception 5:12

8 Off Course 3:54

Cortex

Thomas Johansson  trumpet

Kristoffer Berre Alberts  saxophones

Ola Høyer  double bass

Gard Nilssen  drums

Jon Rune Strøm Quintet - Fragments (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Yes, you can create a band concept from the double bass position, but instead of putting himself as the focus of the collective music of his quintet, bassist and composer Jon Rune Strøm enlisted a second bass player, Christian Meaas Svendsen, for the group, like him doubling the upright instrument with an electric one. Which means that the idea is on the sound, not the personality. And the choice of companion explains much of what we find in “Fragments”. If Strøm is known for his incredible energy and physicality, Svendsen is a force of nature, sometimes using two or three bows or performing with arms, legs, feet and mouth. The center of gravity of the music is low, but the two horns manage to take it to the highest levels possible, namely trumpeter Thomas Johansson and tenor saxophonist André Roligheten, with drummer Andreas Wildhagen gluing it all and covering the fortuitous gaps like an octopus. That’s what differenciates the Jon Rune Strøm Quintet from all the other bands including Strøm’s contribution, namely Friends & Neighbors, All Included, Universal Indians and Frode Gjerstad Trio. The project belongs to the same family tree, call it free music or free jazz as you wish, but there’s something else going on. Bass-driven pleasure in its purist form, that is.

Thomas Johansson: trumpet

André Roligheten: tenor saxophone

Christian Meaas Svendsen: double bass, fender bass [left channel]

Jon Rune Strøm: double bass, fender bass [right channel]

Andreas Wildhagen: drums

All music by Jon Rune Strøm (Tono)

Recorded by Christian Obermayer at Victoria, Nasjonal Jazzscene, March 2017 | Mixed by Obermayer at Strype Audio, Oslo, September 2017 | Mastered by Obermayer and Strøm at Strype Audio, Oslo, November 2017

Produced by Jon Rune Strøm | Co produced by Pedro Costa at Clean Feed | Design by Travassos | Picture by Petra Cvelbar | Painting by Jon Rune Strøm

Thomas Johansson / Oyvind Storesund / Paal Nilssen-Love - Revolution Before Lunch (CATALYTIC SOUND 2017)

freejazzblog.org

This ad-hoc Norwegian trio was formed by trumpeter Thomas Johansson in 2015 as a part of his Master's Degree at The Norwegian Academy of Music. It features the original rhythm section of Gjerstad Trio, Nilssen-Love and double bass player Øyvind Storesund. Johansson plays in Nilssen-Love Large Unit and in other modern jazz outfits as Cortex, All Included, and Friends & Neighbors.

This trio was recorded at the Nasjonal Jazzscene Victoria club in Oslo on February 2015, and the recording is the debut one of Johansson newly-founded Tammtz label. Johansson is a charismatic musician with a strong sound of his own, assured, round and full, flowing with arresting ideas. The rhythm section of Nilssen-Love and Storesund keeps him on his toes, forcing him to adjust his ideas into the urgent, propulsive rhythm section that keeps shifting its rhythmic dynamics. Nilssen-Love and Storesund sound as a telepathic, inseparable unit, but wisely leaving enough space for Johanssen to deliver his commanding solos.

The first two pieces, the propulsive “Close As Hail” and the more moderate “Pouch Of Skin”, sound as an introduction to the 26-minutes tour-de-force of “Incomprehensible Beats”. After Johansson adapted himself to the immediate, shifting dynamics of Nilssen-Love and Storesund, these two experienced improvisers push Johansson even further, opening and varying the rhythmic envelope constantly, coloring his extended breathing techniques and some of his most lyrical playing with great imagination and detail. Johansson meets this challenge with remarkable success, claiming his status as a leader to reckon with in the rich legacy of fiery, free jazz meets free improvised trio format.

Close As Hail

Pouch Of Skin

Incomprehensible Beats

Thomas Johansson: trumpet, flugelhorn

Øyvind Storesund: double bass

Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

Cortex - Live in New York (2016) CLEAN FEED RECORDS

On Cortex second release with Clean Feed Records you’ll find them again in the best context possible: in concert. Considering that the band works in the tradition pioneered by Ornette Coleman, this concert recording has a special significance, because it took place in the world capital of jazz, New York.

The approach may be somewhat European, but the music registered here seemed (and seems) at home. Critics wrote at the occasion that Cortex is walking the same routes where we can find John Zorn’s Masada. This means the music is energetic and robust, with a frenetic rhythm section and a trumpet / sax frontline very exact when delivering unisons and counterpoints and free in the improvised solos. The music is simultaneously heavy and agile, flowing as a bird of prey in open air, and defying gravity. A must have, must listen!

1. Higgs 7:56

2. Fall 7:05

3. Ghost March / Ahead 20:25

Thomas Johansson  trumpet

Kristoffer Alberts  saxophones

Ola Høyer  double bass

Gard Nilssen  drums

All compositions by Thomas Johansson (TONO)

Recorded live by Randy Thaler at IBeam Brooklyn, September 18th 2015 | Mixed by Ingar Hunskaar, February 2016 | Mastered by Fridtjof Lindemann and Ingar Hunskaar at Strype Audio, April 2016

Produced by Cortex  | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos