Mats Gustafsson & Joachim Nordwall: Their Power Reached Across Space And Time-To Defy Them Was Death-Or Worse

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Mats Gustafsson (s, f)
Joachim Nordwall (elec, syn)

Label:

Thrill Jockey

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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