Lumen Drones
Lumen Drones is a fascinating and powerful collaboration between Hardanger fiddle master Nils Økland and Per Stainar Lie and Ørjan Haaland, respectively guitarist and drummer with Norwegian ‘post-rock’ group The Low Frequency In Stereo. The participants describe their project as a psychedelic drone band, but its stylistic reach is broad and evocative and will trigger many musical associations. Specific influences include the Doors, The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Durutti Column and “the jazz of the Dave Pike set”, but the Lumen Drones also rove through modal, ambient, multi-folk, minimal and noise zones, making exciting music all the way…
ECMPlayer (http://player.ecmrecords.com/lumen-drones)
Ketil Bjørnstad: A passion for John Donne
Ketil Bjørnstad’s passion for the English metaphysical poet John Donne (1572-1631) is a lifelong affair. His settings of Donne’s verse have led to recordings including The Shadow, Grace and the ECM album The Light. “After working with the texts of John Donne for more than twenty years, I still find new approaches to understanding what he wrote and I find music throughout. It is in the language, in the rhythm, in the silence between the sentences – a passionate quest for meaning and reconciliation. Donne’s dramatic life is reflected in the texts and everywhere in them you will find the passion, melodies and sounds”. Bjørnstad wrote A passion for John Donne for the Oslo International Church Festival in the winter of 2011/2012 and the premiere performance – documented here – was at the Sofienberg Kirke in Oslo in March 2012. The Oslo Chamber Choir is sensitively directed by Håkon Daniel Nystedt, and passion is personified in the unique performance of Håkon Kornstad, who makes his ECM debut, as both tenor saxophonist and classical tenor singer.
ECMPlayer (http://player.ecmrecords.com/ketil)
Jøkleba: Outland
The Norwegian trio Jøkleba was formed in 1990, establishing itself as one of the most unpredictable groups on the Scandinavian scene. The present disc – the fifth Jøkleba album, but the first for ECM – finds old friends Jørgensen, Balke and Kleive working with pulse and colour and texture in collective music-making, emphasizing electronics, trumpet and voice, in freely created pieces which hint at relationships between inspiration and instability. Track titles make reference to writings by Sylvia Plath, Laura Restrepo, Sadegh Hedayat, Guy de Maupassant and Ken Kesey, in particular to their descriptions of the disintegration of identity, “the human mind when it gets lost”, as Jon Balke puts it. All three musicians have recorded prolifically for ECM in a wide variety of contexts, but the particular chemistry of Jøkleba is unique unto itself.
ECMPlayer (http://player.ecmrecords.com/outland)
