Christian Wallumrød is a real talent on the Norwegian jazz scene, as nine albums on the ECM label attest. Indeed, the personnel here is exactly the same as ECM's 2013 release Outstairs. We are told in the accompanying release notes that the seven tracks on Kurzsam and Fulger represent a more minimalistic approach by Wallumrød – translation: less compositional form and melodic content – and a more “rigorously austere aesthetic where less really does mean more” – translation: boring. In fact, the album opens with ‘Haksong’ whose theme slips in and out of the home key, against a jaunty rhythm closer to country and western than the gangar, springar or halling. It closes with a series of incongruous fanfares specially designed to get on your wick, a piano episode that sounds like it was recorded in the next room, a return to the fanfares and finally some more distant piano noodling – or was it the cleaner lightly dusting the keyboard? In between is a succession of episodes in sound, some unbelievably tedious – ‘Klafferas’ and the 11 -minute ‘Arpsam’ – and some not – ‘Phoniks’.