Guitarist Ivar Grydeland and percussionist Ingar Zach, prime movers and catalysts for free improvised music in Norway, got in touch with Christian Wallumrød after hearing his “Sofienberg Variations” on ECM and they have since worked together in diverse combinations including, since 2004, ‘Dans les arbres’ a project completed by French clarinettist Xavier Charles. Their radical all-acoustic improvisation explores sonorities and textures that frequently sound electronic, and also often sounds ‘composed’ – with echoes of Cage and the New York School.
Dans les arbres
Xavier Charles, Ivar Grydeland, Christian Wallumrød, Ingar Zach
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04:55 - 2L'Indifférence
08:28 - 3Le Flegme
06:17 - 4L'Engourdissement
05:27 - 5Le Détachement
06:15 - 6La Froideur
08:15 - 7L'Assoupissement
04:28 - 8La Retenue
05:21
“Dans les arbres” is both band name and album title of this first release from a Norwegian/French collective that has been pooling energies since 2004, while also drawing on longer-established associations. The release marks the ECM debut of guitarist Ivar Grydeland and clarinettist Xavier Charles. Percussionist Ingar Zach has contributed to projects with Jon Balke (Magnetic North’s “Diverted Travels” and “Statements” by the Batagraf group), while Christian Wallumrød, of course, has been an ECM recording artist for 12 years already, with four albums as a leader for the label, most recently “The Zoo Is Far”, which was issued in 2007.
If the benevolent inspiration of John Cage was felt already on Wallumrød’s “A Year from Easter” (2003) whose titled referenced Cage’s “A Year from Monday”, there are musical-temperamental affinities also on “Dans les Arbres”. Cage had his prepared piano... and Ivar Grydeland has his prepared banjo, whose patient metallic pulse is one of the anchoring sounds here. Rather like Cage or Morton Feldman and other indeterminate music-makers, these improvisers also seem determined to ‘let sounds be sounds’, setting the timbres and textures free, or exploring them in detail, at times with an almost scientific detachment. Theirs is a music of small revelations rather than larger gestures, with arresting sound combinations constantly emerging. Occasionally, with sruti box and clarinet establishing thick drones, it sounds more like Eastern ritual music than Western improvised music. In other moments this strictly acoustic music sounds remarkably electronic.
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