The sound is basically free improv with an impulse-driven character to it something stark and primeval (on ‘Brighton’ the abstract heavily modified vocal line almost animal-like) and mostly short pieces some with hints of literary titles (eg ‘Bell Jar’ [Sylvia Plath], ‘One Flew Over’ [Ken Kesey]) reliant on the ESP-like rapport between the three, Balke and Jørgensen excelling in the more musically intimate moments for much of its development. The drone-like tech-y backdrop to a piece such as ‘Blind Owl’ providing a tundra of the imagination. […] Challenging and rewarding music.
Stephen Graham, Marlbank
This belated ECM debut album shows off the trio’s state-of-the-art-mastery of electro-acoustic improvisation, with random-seeming squawks and squelches integrated within a brooding soundscape whose tonal colours form a stark backdrop to Jorgensen’s melancholy horn-play, as on the bewitching ‘Beyond The Glass’, or the lambent ‘Nightwood’, which are as affecting as anything I’ve heard this year.
Phil Johnson, Independent On Sunday
Electronic soundscapes blended with acoustic instruments are becoming ever more sophisticated, and this engaging album by three outstanding Norwegian musicians is extraordinarily successful. The name of Jøkleba is derived from the surnames of the musicians: trumpeter and singer Per Jørgensen (who also plays kalimba and flute), pianists and electronic sounds creator Jon Balke, and percussionist Audun Kleive, who also contributes electronic elements to the recording. […] All the tracks are credited as being composed by all three players, but (as is so often the case with contemporary music) it is difficult to tell where written composition gives way to free improvising. What matters is that the creative talent of these players has created an album of absorbing, cohesive performances.
John Watson, Jazz Camera
While there are jazzlike passages like the graceful ‘The Nightwood’; subtly percussive and rhythmic episodes like ‘One Flew Over’; and Balke continues to be a master of the selective keyboard intervention. Jokleba’s music is probably best suited to free-improv listeners, but its meticulous detailing and musicality do have an eerie seductiveness that reaches way outside that loop.
John Fordham, The Guardian
Jøkleba conjures up a delicately sparse collective sound canvas of pointillist textures, eastern-sounding drones, abstract cinematic soundscapes and fragmented percussive grooves. The effect can often be mesmerizing.
Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise
Dealing with pulse, texture and a very dark tonal palette, its free improvisations are so unlike the better-known solo projects of this esteemed trio of collaborators that a few words of caution, or a substantial slug of absinthe, may be required before taking the plunge […] ‘Outland’ certainly needs perseverance. It’s expressionistic, impulsive, forbidding, disorienting but beguilingly beautiful. Stick with it and you will be rewarded in spades.
Fred Grand, Jazz Journal
