Mats Gustafsson & Joachim Nordwall: Their Power Reached Across Space And Time-To Defy Them Was Death-Or Worse
Author: Spencer Grady
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Mats Gustafsson (s, f) |
Label: |
Thrill Jockey |
Magazine Review Date: |
May/2023 |
Media Format: |
CD, LP, DL |
Catalogue Number: |
Thrill-577 |
RecordDate: |
Rec. 2021 |
Those who are acclimatised to Gustafsson's usual blistering horn-driven wig-outs and rock-indebted swing might need to readjust their settings for this broody slow-motion stew. With old sparring partner and fellow Swede Joachim Nordwall, he's brokered here a trawl through decidedly alien atmospheres rife with sci-fi author Cordwainer Smith's otherworldly influence.
Prurient slurps and gurgles formulate a subterranean glossolalia during ‘Love Shows In Her Smile: It Is Confident (Panik)’, while elsewhere Gustafsson sounds like an extra-terrestrial sealion filtering down a Büchner funnel. The saxophonist fleetingly takes to more customary terrain on ‘His Fingers, Moving In The Air, Produced A Soft Organ-Like Music (Långtråkigt)’, coding in distressed pockets of bestial parp before launching into an incendiary invective across Nordwall's bursts of electronic cluster-bomb ordinance. But, for the most part, this absorbing album deviates from the usual free-jazz slanging matches, its intrepid adventures luxuriating in unhurried mutations born of deep-listening, communication and a whole lotta patience.

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