Pianist Anja Lauvdal and Nils Petter Molvær make for triumphant Punkt 2020

This year’s Punkt festival took place on the top floor of the Hotel Norge in Kristiansand, Norway, in a venue called Stup. This eminently suitable space is usually used as a conference centre, but also possesses a warming acoustic, aided by thin carpeting, window screens and of course, the crystalline sonics of the Punkt sound system, and its engineers. Stup also boasts a four-directions view around this port city on Norway’s south coast, as well as a Cinemascope-length projection screen, for ultimate sensory enhancement.

Attendance was limited to 200, so this 2020 festival was more contained than usual, featuring an all-Norwegian cast of players. Trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær celebrates his 60th birthday later in September, and provided two live remixes during the three-day programme. This is the crucial concept of Punkt: to follow a ‘source’ artist’s set with an immediate reconstruction, as remixers sample their chosen contents and proceed to build a response to a performance, moments after it has concluded.

NPM was at the helm to remix a festival commission by keyboardist and composer Anja Lauvdal, who has had a consistently dynamic presence across several Norwegian festivals in recent years. Her premiere of The School Of Lost Borders involved a piano-bass-drums trio, joined by a string quartet, although that relationship didn’t feature the expected compartmentalisation of such an arrangement. The two violins were frequently strummed like ukuleles, and the strings regularly provided solo expressions, as if they were a composite being. Lauvdal’s jaunty canter was reminiscent of the Penguin Café Orchestra, defiantly optimistic in this year of doom. During more peaceful moments there was a pastoral yearning also found in the music of Gavin Bryars, possibly even a grasping of carefree childhood playfulness.

There couldn’t have been a more contrasting remix. The billed trio of NPM and Punkt creators Jan Bang and Erik Honoré were joined by the birthday surprise of Eivind Aarset (guitars), Mats Eilertsen (bass) and Audun Kleive (drums). Their chosen nightmarescape was dark and dangerous, a deathly funk derived from the electrified minimalism of 1970s Miles Davis, with a notable wiry tension between the bass and drums. Right at the climactic point, Arve Henriksen climbed onstage without his trumpet, singing high and sinister into his microphone while crouched in front of NPM, as if paying homage to his brass mentor. This was a Norwegian supergroup (pictured above), acting more like they were playing an unconnected set rather than remixing, although the Punkt samplists did snatch out a reverberantly repeating Lauvdal piano chunk.

For a pair of prime remix examples involving clearly discernible source elements, we could look to the opening Thursday night, which now has a tradition of highlighting student electronicists. Firstly, the Moskus trio played a set, artist-in-residence Lauvdal joined by bass/drums in what’s surely her core band. She blends grand piano and toy-like electro-keys, crafting a disorientating meeting between lush and trashy, invoking a drugged-up inchworm, in its wandering progress. They reached a completely aligned rhythmic unity around 25 minutes in, becoming as one organic, wriggling being.

The remix team of Kristiian Isachsen and Kristine Hoff grabbed cymbal sounds for a swirling soup, navigating viscous depths, with tactics reminding the listener of dub reggae, but more formless, as a slow motion bassy pulse grew. Hoff began to sing, as your scribe leaned back and caught a sunset seepage through the window, suddenly aware of the Kristiansand expanse. All aspects had combined in a profound passage of sound and vision.

It was better to experience the songbook of singer and pianist Susanna, in this solo and exposed setting, her voice set free from the constraints of having a band, revealing a very sensitive control of asymmetrical phrasing, in a precise relationship with her piano figures. The remix by Bendik Baksaas began by taking a tight vocal looplet, against a growing hum, quickly adding other phrases in a song-form arrangement that was remarkable for a spontaneously constructed pattern. His remix was like a suite, creeping from clustervocal hocketing into an instrumental house section, intensifying as it pumped into a spiny bumper, ending up sounding like Moby. This was a longer than usual remix, but completely justified in its elaborate storytelling evolution. Punkt always reveals a multitude of possible ways to transform a performance, never running out of permutations.

Punkt will also feature in the November print edition of Jazzwise, in another review, covering a different set of performances…