release date: 30.09.2022 on Hubro Records
Geir Sundstøl has made a name for himself as an innovative session musician on hundreds of Norwegian and international albums. 2015 saw the release of Furulund, the first self-composed long player from this Master of Strings. Langen Ro, Norwegian Grammy winner Brødløs and St.
release date: 19.08.2022 on Hubro Records
Sympathetic Magic is an ecstatic, delirious, and deeply touching piece of music; a towering new work in Kim Myhr’s increasingly substantial output as an artist and composer.
release date: 29.04.2022 on Hubro Records
Moskus are the young Norwegian improvising trio [whose] approach is low key and concentrated. Lauvdall concentrates on single notes and the players slip in and out of time with each other with remarkable empathy THE WIRE
fresh, quirky and free, yet tautly coherent * * * * THE GUARDIAN
combines a little groove with a lot of serious sentience * * * * INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
There’s a deliberate, and thought-provoking, naivety to the trio’s approach. * * * JAZZWISE
Moskus conveys their perspective of the world with vivid improvisation in a genre-free universe.
release date: 03.09.2021 via Odin Records
“A wide spanning debut that makes the most of Hanna Paulsberg’s blistering sax over a riotous rhythm section seemingly battling severe ADHD. Flukten’s lovelier side surfaces amid Klovning’s mellow guitar ruminations, while sideways nods to Per Johansson and Paul Motion complete a thrillingly uneasy listen.”
★ ★ ★ ★
MOJO
Flukten [The Escape] release their debut album, Velkommen håp [Welcome Hope) on CD, LP & DL through ODIN Records on the 3rd September 2021.
release date: April 2, 2020 via ODIN
Fasten your seat belt, please. Get ready for the full tilt, barely tamed, beautiful monster that is Gard Nilssen’s sixteen-piece Supersonic Orchestra. Audacious and experimental, like everything the Norwegian drummer and composer touches, Supersonic flouts convention and, in particular, realigns the longstanding relationship between pre-composition and improvisation in orchestral jazz. If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours, its debut, was recorded live at the adventurous Molde International Jazz Festival in 2019, where Nilssen was Artist in Residence. The band’s uniquely configured, all-star lineup features three drummers, three double bassists and ten horn players, most of them saxophonists.
Norwegian release: January the 21 , 2020
International release: February the 28, 2020
Hardanger-fiddler, composer and bandleader Erlend Apneseth follows up the acclaimed 2019 Hubro release, ‘Salika, Molika’ – a game-changing folk-meets-experimental-sound project where Apneseth’s regular trio was augmented by the addition of star accordionist Frode Haltli – with the richly collaborative ‘Fragmentarium’.
Release: 24.01.2020
For his sixth Hubro album, the Norwegian composer, bandleader and virtuoso guitarist Stein Urheim presents a new set of compositions for a specially formed group featuring three of his favourite musicians: bassist Ole Morten Vagan and percussionists/multi-instrumentalists Hans Hulbækmo and Kåre Opheim. Characterised by a relaxed, loose-limbed pulse rippling with cross-rhythms, and an epic, widescreen feel that can suggest the open vistas of the American west, the seven tracks function together as a kind of informal suite. Their strongly defined melodies and carefully layered textures evoke a luminously-coloured acoustic world where bucolic, country-rock tinged soundscapes meet world-jazz improvisations and a little of what might be termed pop-Americana.
Ever since Jan Garbarek put Norwegian jazz on the map in the late 1980s, and even more so after the international success of his rigorously ascetic Officium in 1994, the music has acquired a reputation for being, if not entirely lacking in passion, then for being, at least, emotionally detached. More recently, with the emergence of a new generation of Norwegian musicians aligned with the electronica movement, the country’s jazz has, justly or unjustly, acquired a parallel reputation for being obsessed with technology and overly self-referential.
