There’s a rare acoustic alchemy at play in Time Is A Blind Guide. Personnel changes have guided and co-shaped the musical character of Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen’s ensemble and on the group’s third recording we experience a slight shift in the line-up, with Leo Svensson Sander replacing Lucy Railton on cello. The new voice blends seamlessly into the quietly breathing ensemble sound, with a sparse but precise Ayumi Tanaka navigating her way empathetically across the keyboard, responsive to Strønen’s percussive layers, Ole Morten Vågan’s bending double bass work and Håkon Aase’s lyrical violin accounts. At times the group’s three string instruments make up a firm trio-unit that enters into thoughtful dialogue with piano and percussion, while for the majority of the record, the group’s pulse works as a whole, with each instrument dynamically gliding in and out of the picture.
“With this ensemble, it’s rather about taking away than bringing more into the music,” notes the group’s leader, adding, “one of the key tools is space. There’s a broad dynamic range; it can be really quiet and then suddenly really loud; Things might seem unexpected but I’d like to think they are also coherent, connected to the natural pulses around us in our every-day lives.”
These dynamic extremes are perhaps most prominent on “Dismissed” – a piece defined by it abruptly stumbling pulse and heavily articulated tutti phrases alternating with rapid improvised sequences – the group being at its most tight-knit. “Season” on the other hand brings lyrical softness and a tinge of folk to the mix, with the violin and cello bowing in blissful harmony. Thomas: “Leo (cello) is an improviser but also has deep background in folk – so he connects seamlessly with Håkon on violin. Their common approach to both reading the music but also adding their own improvised voices has deeply shaped the overall band sound.”
The group’s previous recording Lucus (2018) garnered rave-reviews, with the German daily Nürnberger Nachrichten pinpointing exactly the strengths that make TIABG so unique, calling the ensemble “a musically, even philosophically open-minded quintet exploring outer space somewhere between baroque and folk. Questioning, hesitating, emphasising. This is jazz full of searching, longing, devoted to brittle beauty.” The same qualities are to the fore once more, throughout the record and especially permeating on a piece like “Fall”, where Strønen and his cohorts conjure an almost chilling silence, making each motion of the bow or drum stick count. “Tuesday” reduces the action further, whereas “Cubism” introduces the first inkling of a fixed rhythmic meter in the programme.
Homages make up the expressive undercurrent that frames Off Stillness: The opening “Memories of Paul” is dedicated to not one but two legends of improvisation going by that first name, Motian and Bley – two idiosyncratics on their instruments each with an extensive history on the label. It’s a tense piece, almost void of tonality, turning the focus towards the fluttering interplay of Thomas and Ayumi, the pianist with whom the bandleader has “no need to talk about anything beforehand, because we’ve come to know each other so well. I have complete trust in her”. The piece received a different shape post-recording, as the percussionist notes, when “Manfred [Eicher] picked a take that I hadn’t even previously considered. But he understood the piece in its context, the whole of the record. Making me realise that it was the much better take for the record.”
Something of a summary of all the musical elements that precede it, “In Awe of Stillness” can be divided in two, with a textural exploration making up the first half, and a more agitated, almost tumultuous approach to interplay following in the second. But why the title Off Stillness? According to Thomas there are several reasons, though one stands out: The tribute to a formative personality of his youth (and another artist well-known in the ECM cosmos): Jon Balke.
“The title is a tribute to a formative moment in my youth,” says Thomas. “It honors the first real jazz concert I attended at the age of 15. Sneaking in through the kitchen of a cafe in Tønsberg, I was introduced to Jon Balke’s Oslo 13 by my now father-in-law, composer and musician Terje Johannesen. Their music from the album Off Balance changed the way I thought about music in general, and drumming specifically. This memory came back to me when I realized that Jon turned 70 this year.”
Recorded at Rainbow Studio, Oslo in 2021, and mixed in Munich in 2024, the album was produced by Manfred Eicher.
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Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen joined the ECM ranks in 2005 as part of Parish, the quartet he brought to life with master pianist and ECM stalwart Bobo Stenson, bassist Mats Eilertsen and saxophonist Fredrik Ljungkvist – Jazzwise magazine lauded the self-titled record: “The music is cool, spare, and thoughtful, with every note carefully placed for maximum weight and effect.”
Thomas’s subsequent endeavours for the label include three recordings as Food (Quiet Inlet, Mercurial Balm, This Is Not A Miracle), the co-led project with English saxophonist Iain Bellamy, as well as sideman dates alongside Mats Eilertsen’s trio (And Then Comes The Night, 2019), Sinikka Langeland (Wind and Sun, 2023) and John Surman (Words Unspoken, 2024). He founded Time Is A Blind Guide in 2013, with the group’s first and self-titled recording arriving two years later. The Guardian’s John Fordham praised the broad idiomatic reach of the debut, saying, “if crossover means anything, this is a fascinating example.” The ensemble’s sophomore recording Lucus followed in 2018 – it brought pianist Ayumi Tanaka into the fold, who collaborated with Thomas again on Bayou (2021), a trio of Ayumi, Thomas plus Marthe Lea on multiple instruments (“Here every sound has intention and awareness” – London Jazz News).
Released in late 2024, Relations saw the percussionist paired up in various duos, recorded over distance in collaboration with Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Jorge Rossy and Sinikka Langeland – “a fine contemporary take on the micro-tradition of drummer-plus-one-other”, BBC Music Magazine.
Ayumi meanwhile has released her own leader album Subaqueous Silence in 2021, a trio date with bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen and Per Oddvar Johansen on percussion. More recordings are on the horizon.
