THE LIVING ROOM
Still Distant Still
ILK182
Ilk Music 2011
08 Tracks. 45mins31secs

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The meeting of three extremely talented and respected musicians in their own right, The Living Room is a breathtaking formation with a particularly developed taste for complex avant-gardist jazz. Formed of Danish saxophonist Torben Snekkestad, pianist Søren Kjærgaard, also from Denmark, and Norwegian drummer and percussionist Thomas Strønen, The Living Room have, for their debut, devised a series of intricate minimal improvised pieces where they explore the outer reaches of contemporary jazz.

Still Distant Still is not an easy record to ease oneself into. Right from the opening moments of Tremolo Hiving, the tone is set: sparse percussions over which a sax flutters hesitantly, never gathering any more than a few notes at any one time. Later on, occasional piano chords, sombre and ominous at first, then lighter in the latter parts, drop seemingly at random. Despite its utterly disjointed and somewhat desolate aspect, there is something about the piece with instantly captures the imagination and the trio continue to bend this idea out of shape through the rest of the album. At times, like on the first of the two-part piece Twining, or later on with the title track, they appear willing to smooth the sharp angles of their improvisations, but they soon let utter abstract forms flood back in. Indeed, while Twining Pt. 1 is rather more melodic and refined than the piece that precedes it, Snekkestad and Kjærgaard actually working for a moment on complementing each other and developing a sustained progression, this all comes completely apart on Twining Pt. 2 as increasingly heavy strips of noise are torn apart, each instrument relentlessly fuelling the chaos which ensues.

Things start with Strønen and Snekkestad placing complex motifs against each other on the title track, and the level of intricacy increases drastically as Kjærgaard joins in, but after a few minutes, this is all brought to an end as piano and sax suddenly step into a much more atmospheric and sparse landscape, supplemented with discreet bells and rarefied electronic textures. Even more desolate and scarce, the underlay of tiny processed percussions and electronics which Strønen deploys on The Extinguished never provides enough grit for anything to stick to it for long. Kjærgaard attempts to let his hands runs on the keyboard, but to very little avail, while Snekkestad is often reduced to nothing more than a breathe. Stone Unturned is in comparison meatier and more consequent sonically, and, as with Twining Pt. 1, actually sees the whole formation work together to create a serene and refined sequence.

By contrast, Rainbow Stomp or Mustard Variations, whilst not as vivid and tortured as Twining Pt. 2, again denote a shift toward somewhat extreme abstract forms as all three musicians take on the sheer sonic experiment which is the binding force behind this formation.

All three members of The Living Room can boast of very impressive and eclectic work, but this project is undoubtedly at the more exploratory end of their respective scope. Complex, abstract and challenging Still Distant Still remains surprisingly evocative and accessible, a strong testament to the combined level of talent and musicianship collected here.

4.7/5

Torben Snekkestad | Søren Kjærgaard | Thomas Strønen |  Ilk Music
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Thomas Strønen is undoubtedly one of the most talented drummers of his generation. A member of Food, Humcrush, Meadow, Monsters & Puppets and many more, his very diverse, yet highly recognisable style puts him is at the heart of these projects. With new albums from Monsters & Puppets, Humcrush and The Living Room, Thomas takes some time off his incredibly busy schedule to talk to themilkfactory about how he started playing drums, his long-standing collaboration with Iain Ballamy as Food, his relationship with Maria Kannegaard and how it led to Monsters & Puppets, and what his next solo project may be.

Thomas, how did come to play music, and what made you choose the drums?
At the age of five, visiting Kiel in Germany, I discovered a tin drum in a shop window and cried my eyes out to get it. That day I threw out my teddy bear and replaced it with that drum. I had it with me almost everywhere and played it till it fell to pieces. I don’t know why I chose drums, or even music. My grandfather, whom I never met, was an accordion player and violinist, and my much older brother was a DJ. I’ve always been playing and in my grade book from my first year at school (and the following ones) it said ‘Thomas keeps disturbing the other pupils by drumming on his desk all the time’.

Growing up, I was also massively into sport, actually considering a career as a sprinter (100m) Music always came first though. Living in a small place (Åsgårdstrand, where Edvard Munch painted The Scream and Girls On The Bridge) I was lucky to play a lot and got introduced to improvised music and jazz, mostly European, in my early teens.

I keep drumsticks everywhere, in all my bags and rooms and it drives my wife mad, I’m now about to drive my kids mad too.

You’ve been performing and recording with Iain Ballamy in Food for over ten years now, first as a quartet with Mats Eilertsen and Arve Henriksen, then as a duo. How did you meet Iain and how did the project start?
Iain and I meet through friends; (hold on!) Iain’s sister in law knew a friend of mine’s girlfriend… While visiting my friend (Lars Ådne) he decided to call Iain so we could meet. At the time, I was studying music and was of course happy to get to meet a well-known and experienced musician like him. I knew him from Django Bates’s band (ed: Loose Tubes) and Earthworks.

Iain played me some records and I played him a demo- cassette! He actually loved it and suggested we start a band together. I thought he was just being polite until I met him by accident at some festival a year later. When he wondered why I hadn’t stayed in contact, I decided to do something about it. It felt natural to ask Mats, as we where playing a lot together. I’d just done a project with Arve and he was also interested in continuing the relationship. One phone call later, we had two festival gigs at the Molde Jazz Festival, ending up with a live recording. We continued with this constellation for six years and did four records together as a quartet. At some stage everyone got extremely busy and instead of saying no to lots of nice opportunities, we decided to work as a duo, inviting various suitable guests for our performances.

How did you make the transition from quartet to duo when Mats and Arve left? Was it a natural process for you two to continue working together?
After Arve left the band to concentrate more on his solo career, we tried out a few different settings without being satisfied. To find why we liked playing together again, Iain and I went into the studio for almost a week in London. That resulted in us taking the music in a totally different direction and it got released as Molecular Gastronomy. It took quite a few concerts and long hours at various rehearsal spaces to come to what represents Food today though. To make the break even clearer we approached Manfred Eicher at ECM with new recorded music, and released Quiet Inlet last year. We’re now at the final stage of finishing off another record for ECM. This time there will be with more guests, including an Indian singer that will take you to another planet!

Food perform both as duo and with like-minded guests. Instead of tying the band up in one setting, depending on everybody’s availability and running the danger of get stuck musically, we invite musicians we think can contribute sounds and texture we think and hope can develop and complement our own.

As you’ve just mentioned, you regularly work with additional musicians in Food, the most recent of which is Christian Fennesz, with whom you have played live recently and who featured on Quiet Inlet. How do these collaborations happen, and are you planning on working more extensively with Fennesz or Nils Petter Molvær, with whom you were due to tour Japan last June, before the tour had to be postponed following the earthquake that devastated part of the country?
Last year, we played as a trio with Fennesz, as a quartet with Fennesz and Nils Petter, as a trio with Eivind Aarset, as a trio with Prakash Sontakke (an Indian singer and slide guitarist) and as a quartet with Aarset and Sontakke. We will be touring Japan in April 2012 with Nils Petter and we will continue to collaborate with all the others as well. Like most collaborations, they happen by listening or playing with new musicians or trying out new constellations when we get solicited.

This collaboration with Iain is one of your longest-running projects to date. How do you keep moving forward with it, especially with you living in Norway and Iain in the UK?
I work with both Iain and John Taylor from the UK, with Torben Snekkestad and Søren Kjærgaard in Denmark and other musicians living in different places. We tour everywhere, so it doesn’t really matter where you live. We rehearse ahead of touring or meet up for a few days to work. With Food, we always set off two or three weeks in a year, just to rehearse for long hours. On top of that, we record all concerts we do and sit down and go through them. Some end up on records too!

You have been part of the Maria Kannegaard Trio for quite some time, and you have just released a collaboration with Maria on Fender Rhodes and you on drums as Monsters & Puppets. How did the idea of this collaboration come up, and what is the inspiration behind the project?
Maria and I have worked together in various settings from 1997 when we started her trio. We know each other extremely well and use each other as critical voices for our own work. We send each other compositions, recordings and ideas via the net and give advice and constructive feedback. Having played together for a long time, we got asked to play a double solo concert at Molde Jazz Festival. Just before the concert, we decided to play as a duo instead. Both being a bit bored with a lot of the intellectual jazz, we wanted to be more extreme towards noise and rock music. Monster & Puppets is the result of three hours in a studio in Oslo; everything was improvised on the go.

The album was released on a new Norwegian imprint, Gigafon. What made you choose such a young label?
Maria has been releasing her records on Jazzland Recordings (Bugge Wesseltoft), while I’ve been on ECM and Rune Grammofon. In order to not mix up ongoing bands, we looked for something smaller with a lower profile. They have a good musical approach and they have very nice covers as well.

There is also a new Humcrush album, which is a collaboration between yourself and Ståle Storløkken on one side, and, on this album Sidsel Endresen on the other. Did you know Sidsel prior to working with her? How did the collaboration happen?
I’ve known Sidsel as a singer since I was twelve years old. I’ve always treasured her as one of the most exciting singers and musicians of all times. We did a concert with Humcrush and Sidsel on the initiative of Jan Ole Otnes at the Molde Jazz Festival a few years ago. (I must mention that the Molde Jazz Festival were the first to put on Food, Food with Fennesz, Monsters & Puppets and also Meadow!). It worked out very well and we’ve now toured Europe twice and played various concerts since. We’ll be out playing again in December.

Sidsel is very critical of what she does, both on stage and in music in general. I admire the way she has stayed focused, never being tempted to take shortcuts to make life easier for herself. She never compromises. It’s challenging to play with her as it is ‘almost’ never good enough. Much of the qualities I see in her are qualities I appreciate and recognise. It’s a treat to occasionally have her in Humcrush. Ståle and I have worked for many years together and she brings something new and fresh. It also changes the way we play after we’ve worked as a trio. We try to keep what’s genuine about Humcrush whilst playing with her and I don’t feel we have to compromise in the way we interact as a trio. It is not to say that it doesn’t sound different with her onboard.

Sidsel’s approach to vocals is pretty unique and often seems much closer to the relation that musicians have with their instruments than to traditional singers. Did that impact on the music you created?
I don’t think of Sidsel as a singer, in the same way as I don’t think of Ståle as a keyboard player. They are musical contributors in sounds, texture and form. Their instruments are just a way for them to express themselves. I probably would have worked with them even if they played something completely different. It feels like this with most of the musicians I’m fortunate to work with. Sidsel is creating a new musical tradition, though. When you hear singers of a younger generation in Norway today, you realise the impact she has made on the Norwegian music scene.

Humcrush started with you and Ståle Storløkken with a first album back in 2004. How did the idea of the record come up, and did you think at the time it would be developing it into the full project that it has become?
When I took my final exam at the Jazz academy, I played a concert with three keyboard – players; Maria, Ståle and Erlend Skomsvoll. After only a few minutes, Ståle and I both knew that we should play together. We’re both concerned about time, colours and texture and seem to agree on many musical matters, or even better, disagree and give each other some resistance and challenges.

Just after this, Ståle got a commission to compose for a festival and he brought together Lars Danielsson (bass/ cello) and me. Lars double- booked himself on the first tour and that left us with Humcrush!

Parish, released in 2005 on ECM, was published with you as a leader, and was recorded with Bobo Stenson on piano, Frederik Ljungkvist on sax and clarinet and Mats Eilertsen on bass, although there was an earlier album, recorded with the same formation, but this time released under the name of Parish. What was the difference between the two projects?
It is the same band and project. Manfred (ECM) wanted my name on the record to make it clear that it was my band, while the name of the band was always Parish. That was a great band and I think we all really enjoyed playing together. Unfortunately we got together at a time where we all were extremely busy with other bands and it just got difficult to keep up with it.

In 2006, you released Pohlitz on Rune Grammofon, an experimental album which you recorded alone and for which you played percussions and electronics. Pohlitz is actually listed on your website as a project in its own right, a variation of which is also mentioned with string quartet McFalls Chamber. Can you tell us more about your original inspiration for the album, and did you always envisage it as a project?
I always do a few solo concerts every year. I feel it gives me focus and it keeps challenging me. I wanted to make an album that mixed contemporary electronic composition and a minimalist melodic ‘club’ (in the widest terms) set. It was done in real time with no overdubs and was extremely challenging to create. I immediately deleted the three first days in studio. I practiced for another six months and toured in Japan, got back and did it all in almost one day.

Reviewers drew comparisons to gamelan music, but I had no inspiration from that at all. The bells and gongs are my instruments and sound. My style has been inspired by minimalist music as well as classical Japanese music, and that’s what I wanted to express with that recording. The colours and forms are detailed, small fragments change the direction of the music.

I did record a new Pohlitz record about two years ago, but as I started another project (writing for strings) it never got released and I’m not convinced that the world needs another record like that.  Some of it is used as film music, though.

After I did Pohlitz, I’d been working with bells and gongs with electronics so much that I had to do something else for a while. I started writing music for a string ensemble and was lucky enough to being offered a commission to write music for the celebration of the centenary of Edvard Grieg’s death, in the UK. I wrote about forty-five to fifty minutes of music for violin, viola, cello and contrabass and we toured in the UK. I recorded the music two years ago and ECM was going to release it this summer, until Manfred changed his mind and wanted to produce the record. I will have enough material for a new record in a few months time, so hopefully it’ll be out there soon.

Where did the idea of confronting percussions with a string formation stem from, and how did working with the McFalls Chamber impact on your own performance?
It all started many years ago playing together with a larger ensemble, Cicada, a Norwegian string quartet. In the middle of their sound check, I started playing and thought it was a beautiful feeling sitting in the middle of such nice instruments. In the early days, I played more actively, but the last pieces I’ve written leave me more out of it, doing more textures and solo parts in between the compositions. It does have a great impact on how I play, as the dynamic range is compressed and I have to try to get the drums to melt together with the quartet.

Is it easy for you to adapt to the various formations you work with, especially considering how different Food is from Humcrush, or Monsters & Puppets from your solo work? Do you fall back into the necessary mood instantly, or does it take you a while to find your feet again?
I like the combinations I do. Rather than using my whole vocabulary in one (or each) band, I like to give myself different roles in the settings I play. I love working with electronics in Food and Humcrush and then I really appreciate only having acoustic sounds in Meadow.

I like a lot of different music and I don’t like to categorise the different styles I might be touching. I feel that it just sets limitations. I’m more concerned who I play with than which segment they might belong to. I work with composition and improvisation, with texture and with melody, with beat and with ambience. Some call it jazz, others film music, whatever that is. What’s important to me is being able to be Thomas Strønen every time I play. That’s my freedom.

You spend a lot of time on the road playing live and touring. How does playing live compare to playing in the studio for you?
There is really no difference. Most of my concerts are also being recorded, so there’s really no difference, except that it’s more relaxed in the studio. Going to a studio feels almost like having a proper job, which can be a nice illusion sometimes.

With most of your work based on improvisation, was it always part of how you conceived playing music?
Back to as early as I can remember, I had problems being told what to play. I always felt I had a better solution than my teacher at school or in the school band. I must have been a nightmare to work with. I started in a modern mini big band when I was thirteen and didn’t read music very well, so I was dependent on learning things by ear. Music was also quite difficult for me to play, with a heavy-rock background, and I had to have good ideas to manage to get through it.

Even as a composer, I think it’s important that sometimes musicians have ideas that might be stronger than what’s composed, so I’m always open for that. Having said that, I actually love playing good parts, like when Food played with the London Sinfonietta. I had to read the whole score and make my own drum part visual to keep up with the orchestra.

You’ve got a very personal and recognisable style which extends far beyond conventional drumming. What or who has inspired you in your formative years and in your career since?
As mentioned above, I’ve been influence by lots of different styles, genres and people. I got into improvised music in my early teens and was lucky to play with better and more experienced musicians at an early stage. I dug into the jazz history while studying music for six years, but also got into Japanese music (koto, vocals, drum music), classical music (from Bach to Shostakovich and Cage), electronic music (From Varèse to Nordheim and Squarepusher) and also singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.

If you had to take five records with you on tour, which ones would they be?

Glenn Gould: The Goldberg Variations (Bach)

Miles Davis: Live At The Fillmore East

Arvo Pärt: Te Deum

Arne Nordheim: Dodeka
(or Biosphere & Deathprod: Nordheim Transformed)

Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartets No 2 & 8 (Beethoven Quartet)

Email interview November 2011. Thank you to Thomas.

Thomas Strønen | Rune Grammofon | ECM | Gigafon | Ilk Music

HUMCRUSH with SIDSEL ENDRESEN
Ha!
RCD2114
Rune Grammofon 2011
09 Tracks. 41mins37secs

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A singer with a totally unique and challenging vision who has developed improvisational techniques which invariably takes her way beyond language into territories where her voice becomes an extremely versatile and visceral instrument, Sidsel Endresen has worked extensively with Bugge Wesseltoft, recording three albums with him between 1998 and 2002, and has also collaborated with Nils Petter Molvær, Django Bates, Christian Wallumrød and Helge Sten, Jan Bang or Håkon Kornstad to name but a few. Here, she joins Humcrush, the duo formed of keyboard player Ståle Storløkken, who, although best known for his contribution to Veslefrekk and Supersilent, is also a driving force behind Elephant9 and Box, and drummer Thomas Strønen, who, beside his work alongside British saxophonist Iain Ballamy in Food, can be found performing as part of Meadow, the Maria Kannergaard Trio, the Mats Eilertsen Trio and recently Monsters And Puppets.

The trio have toured extensively in recent years, and this album, Humcrush’s fourth, document their performance at the Willisau Jazz Festival. Working almost entirely from wordless vocals, arranged for the most part in syncopated clusters of onomatopoeias as she responds to Storløkken’s keyboard textures and Strønen’s incredibly detailed percussion patterns and sparse electronics, Endresen fills much of the space purposely left free by the two, yet she remains very respectful of their unit and often pulls back to let them take the lead again, going as far as stepping out completely on Ha! 2, as Strønen builds a busy structure, tainted by discreet keyboard touches, and Ha! 8, which finds the two in somewhat much more reflective mood.

Elsewhere though, Endresen’s earthy voice occupies the extremely volatile space between keyboards, drums and electronics with aplomb. Her great capacity to listen and instantaneously adapt to whatever her collaborators throws at her are clearly thrilling to Humcrush who take her on a chaotic journey through fragmented pieces of varying density, from the fairly peaceful and minimal forms of Ha! 1 or Ha! 6 and the almost meditative ambiences of Ha! 3, Ha! 5 or Ha! 7 to the more sustained grooves of Ha! 4 and the exhilarating explosions of Ha! 9.

Thomas Strønen and Ståle Storløkken proceed with more subtlety here than on previous records, keeping their respective contributions under tight control for most of the record, but this actually opens up a new expressive path, which they investigate with clear delight. This results in a series of particularly beautiful minimal pieces which see Strønen building up some of his most complex rhythmic constructions to date, and Storløkken crafting some wonderfully atmospheric moments. These serve Sidsel Endresen extremely well, and while the existing partnership between Strønen and Storløkken is still very much palpable here, it is the relation between the three musicians and their incredible understanding of each other which gives this record all its depth and meaning.

4.8/5

Humcrush (MySpace) | Sidsel Endresen | Rune Grammofon
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MONSTERS & PUPPETS
Monsters  & Puppets
GIGA003
Gigafon 2011
09 Tracks. 38mins23secs

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Norwegian jazz pianist Maria Kannegaard and drummer Thomas Strønen formed Monsters And Puppets after they were invited to perform at the Molde Jazz Festival together, yet while this is an entirely new project for them, the pair have worked together from some years as part the Maria Kannegaard Trio, with bass player Ole Morten Vågan, and have a number of albums under their belt. With their self-titled debut album, the pair go beyond the confines of jazz to incorporate elements of improv, noise and rock.

Far from the airy landscapes of the Kannegaard Trio or the delicate formations of Iain Ballamy’s Food, with whom Strønen has been involved for over twelve years, Monsters And Puppets is an often dark and complex affair which continuously shifts from relatively minimal set ups to much denser, and often harsher, moments. Right from the opening sequence of One (the nine tracks are simply numbered here), a highly distorted Fender Rhodes is confronted with electronics and noise as Strønen injects some heavy boisterous drum sections. This process is partly repeated on Eight, but here, Strønen is virtually alone as he works up impressively dense layers in the space of just two minutes, as Kannegaard’s contribution is reduced to just a few textures at the back.  While the album never quite reaches such a peak of intense energy again, Seven comes very close to it, the only difference perhaps being the extreme intricacy of the drum section, especially in the second half of the piece, as it responds to Kannegaard’s increasingly abstract performance.

The mood may be more subdued on Two, Five or Six, but the use of heavily distorted Rhodes and often sparse percussions carries a very similar tension, albeit one that relies primarily on somewhat sober exchanges. This is taken to an entirely different level on the closing piece, Nine, where the pair appear to look towards musique concrète as they drift into complete abstraction, their respective inputs summed up in just a few notes or blows. Elsewhere, Strønen opts for more structured and direct lines on Three and Four, but Kannegaard remains firmly on a minimal footing as she hangs discreet bleeps on the former or relies on just one note, repeated to exhaustion, for most of the latter.

This first Monsters And Puppets album, released on newly formed Norwegian imprint Gigafon, is an intriguing piece of work which never fails to surprise. At its most minimal, it is wonderfully introspective, while at its most intense, it teems with energy, but, whatever the mood, the pair maintain the tension pretty much all the way through and manage create an instant improv classic.

4.4/5

Maria Kannegaard (MySpace) | Thomas Strønen | Thomas Strønen (MySpace) | Gigafon
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FOOD
Quiet Inlet
2734919
ECM Records 2010
07 Tracks. 46mins58secs

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Formed around the nucleus of British saxophonist Iain Ballamy and Norwegian drummer and percussionist extraordinaire Thomas Strønen, Food once also counted trumpet player Arve Henriksen and bass player Mats Eilertsen as permanent members. The quartet debuted over twelve years ago when Ballamy joined the three Norwegian musicians for a one-off performance on stage. A self-titled album, then a second, Organic & GM Food, two years on, followed, both published on Ballamy’s short-lived Feral Records, before the quartet moved to Rune Grammofon, where they released two more albums, Veggie (2002) and Last Supper (2004), before both Henriksen and Eilertsen left, leaving Ballamy and Strønen sole in charge for the 2006 album Molecular Gastronomy. The pair regularly perform with additional contributors, and it is two of these occasions that have been captured for Quiet Inlet, Food’s sixth album, and their first for ECM.

Built around live recordings made at Oslo’s legendary Blå club in 2007 and at the Molde Festival in 2008, Quiet Inlet sees Food joined by Austrian experimental guitarist Christian Fennesz and Norwegian trumpet player Nils Petter Molvær, the former contributing to three tracks (Tobiko, Mictyris and Fathom), the latter to four (Chimaera, Becalmed, Cirrina and Dweller). Like with every Food release until now, Quiet Inlet is a highly textural and atmospheric record, focussed primarily on Strønen’s exquisite percussive displays and gentle electronics, which serves as a stunning backdrop for Ballamy’s evocative melodic motifs, in turn on tenor and soprano sax.

It is perhaps Molvær’s contribution which is most immediately apparent here as he weaves his own improvisations around Ballamy’s, evoking for a moment Food of years past as the warm glow of the trumpet circles around the softer sound of the soprano sax on Chimaera and Cirrina. On the introspective Becalmed, the pair enter into a fascinating dialogue, both players stepping out in turn at first, then echoing each other’s lines in the second half of the piece. Fennesz remains a more discreet presence on the three tracks he is featured on, his often visceral live noise processing kept well under wrapped here as he favours instead discreet brushes of treated guitars on Mictyris and Fathom, creating wonderfully ethereal moments, especially on the latter, and adds fragments of gritty electronics on album opener Tobiko, which is swept by a powerful wind in its later part, growing increasingly cold and piercing as Strønen’s drumming becomes more defined and assertive.

This ECM debut finds Food in fine form, Ballamy and Strønen effortlessly continuing to reinvent their sound while retaining the principles that have, until now, served them well. Strønen does here what he does best, providing the backbone for these improvisations to flourish, with Fennesz adding some interesting textures to the duo’s natural environment, and it is a pleasure to hear Iain Ballamy once again battling it out with a trumpet player, and he finds in Nils Petter Molvær an inspired companion.

4.8/5

Iain Ballamy | Iain Ballamy (MySpace) | Thomas Strønen | Thomas Strønen (MySpace) | ECM Records
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Pete Judge and Paul Wigens form Eyebrow, a trumpet and drums duo which is found somewhere on the cool headed side of jazz. With pretty impressive CVs under their respective belts, each having performed alongside the likes of Super Furry Animal, Cousteau or Natasha Atlas, the pair were first to take the stage at the Union Chapel this rainy November evening. In the twenty minutes or so of their set, Eyebrow created a rather impressive series of jazz-infused tracks. Judge, on trumpet, assisted by a delay pedal borrowed from Vladislav Delay, and a few effects, provided the melodic structure, often in light floating strips, over Wigens rather delicate drumming. With just enough time to perform five pieces, the pair concluded with a piece, apparently taking its name from a location situation below Leeds station, which saw them push up the rhythmic aspect of their performance for a moment before retiring all too quickly.

A man with fingers in many pies, Finnish musician Sasu Ripatti delivered quite an usual record as Vladislav Delay this year, swapping the heavily diffuse electronics of previous records for a more stripped down sound. On Tummaa, Ripatti was found on drums and percussions, while additional contributors Lucio Capece and Craig Armstrong brought a very different dimension to his sound. Performing as a duo with Capece, this set found its ground closer to traditional Delay territory, with Sasu Ripatti on electronics, having, for practical reason perhaps, abandoned the drums, and  Capece on pretty much anything else, predominently a saxophone and a bass clarinet from which he extracted a surprisingly extensive range of sounds. Partly assembling textures from Capece’s continued input, at times torturing them into impressive delays, at other processing them as part of the fabric of the music, and dressing them with rumbling echoey beats, Ripatti was, in most parts, dominating, yet the partly improvised nature of the set left things pretty open for the pair to weave sounds and noises into characteristically spacious atmospheric pieces.

Despite seemingly working each on their side, with very little visual communication, it was occasionally difficult to know exactly where Capece’s input ended and Ripatti’s processing started, so intricately fitted were the raw and processed. At times, a particular sound would appear to come from Capece, yet it would continue long after he had moved on to other devices, occasionally mutating into something entirely new or left to slowly decay in the background. It was as if the sound sources fed to Ripatti were taking a life of their own, bouncing against or colliding with predefined electronic components and piano textures.

While there was clear demarcations between tracks, the set was performed in one stretched, with no breaks in between pieces, and if there were occasionally echoes of Tummaa, the pair’s performance appeared overall improvised. Not quite what one would expect of a Vladislav Delay solo performance, yet not framing Tummaa‘s exquisite textures, this was yet another persona that inhabited Ripatti this evening.

British jazz saxophist Iain Ballamy is one of these musicians who can as easily slip into the cosy outlines of smooth jazz as step into deeply atmospheric experimental improvisations. At the helm of Food, originally a quartet he formed over ten years ago with drummer Thomas Strønen, trumpetist Arve Henriksen and bassist Mats Eilertsen, Ballamy has produced five albums, two published on his own Feral Records, three on Rune Grammofon. In recent years, Food has become a duo following the departure of both Henriksen and Eilertsen, Ballamy on sax and Strønen on drums, percussions and electronics.

Sole on stage for the first segment of this set, Strønen  laid some delicate rhytmic forms, tinted with gamelan undertones, progressively building a sequence solid enough for Ballamy to come in and dispense soothing fluid sax drapes without drowning the drums. In this particular formation, the dynamic between the two musicians changed throughout in very organic fashion. Often, Ballamy appeared to lead the way early on in a piece, working warm enveloping melodies, some layered, delayed and distorted by Strønen as he provided delicate percussive counterpoints, making extensive use of his panoply of drums, bells, cymbals and other percussive instruments, but at one point or another, it was he who was taking the lead by suddenly switching into much sturdier rhythmic patterns or increasing the intensity of his game, Ballamy retreating, feeding on the trance or applying delicate brushes.

Toward the end of the set, Food expanded to a three piece formation when the pair were joined on stage by guitarist Mark Wingfield, who added guitar fragments which he processed on a laptop. Or at least that was the impression as there was very little evidence of these at sound level. At one point, while Strønen was deep in a rich and maddeningly driven groove, Ballamy retired to the back for a moment, leaving Wingfield to occupy the space, but even this didn’t quite work, and, with the curfew just gone, it was time for the band to bid the audience good night.

Iain Ballamy/Food | Vladislav Delay | Eyebrow (MySpace) | Rune Grammofon | The Leaf Label