One might not think that a 1925 silent film documentary made by polar explorer Roald Amundsen would be the most fertile soil in which to grow jazz, but think again.

Having admired each other’s work for some time, Norwegian guitarist-composer Grydland (best known for recordings with Nils Petter Molvær, David Sylvian, Tony Oxley and Nels Cline) and prolific avant-rock axeman Kaiser – who’s appeared on some 250 albums with the likes of Fred Frith, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Wadada Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, Jim O´Rourke and others – first met at the beginning of last year in an Oslo recording studio. As an experiment they decided to record an improvised guitar duet soundtrack for a classic Norwegian silent film. After half an hour’s setup, Kaiser suggested a short test recording to one of the less likely cinematic candidates, Amundsen’s documentary Ellsworths Flyveekspedition 1925. One hour and 56 minutes later they set down their guitars, having played for the entire length of the film without breaks, in the process creating a complete score for the film.

Five tracks – with a total playing time of just over an hour – were selected for this CD release, which is a thing of wonder. As one might expect from the almost automatic process described above, this is improv at its most spontaneous and organic. The music – guitar lines weaving in and out of each other (as on ‘To The North Pole’) or effects-laden low drones and high tones (‘Roald Amudsen 1925’) – is both powerful and starkly beautiful, evoking windswept, white-scrubbed polar landscapes, with ‘Spitsbergen’ in particular conjuring up images of a chilly, elemental stillness. Although one can view the original film (with Grydland and Kaiser’s new soundtrack) online at Vimeo. com, this CD works brilliantly as stand-alone music, and there can be no greater tribute to the two guitarists’ remarkable creative chemistry and alchemical music-making than that.