Mollestad’s Trio, whose two shows brought the house down at the recent EFG London Jazz Festival, may have brought her increasing prominence in the jazz and rock world. But it is her longer form writing that is proving even more exciting. 2020’s bass-less sextet Ekhidna was a fiery recording replete with crunching analogue keys and fierce sax and trumpet which impressed DownBeat enough to put the composer/guitarist in their ’25 for the future’ choices (about five years too late).

This septet piece, but now with a bass (not however the Trio’s formidable Ellen Brekken who was probably off building herself an ice house somewhere in the Arctic Circle) is all the more ambitious. Tempest Revisited is highly structured but bursting with individualistic improv. The composed nature of the piece largely comes from Mollestad drawing upon Arne Nordheim’s electronic composition The Tempest, plus her own experience of the furious weather of her north Norway home, Alesund.

Thus we have a titanic tussle between structure and primal forces. So the ominous ‘Sun on a Dark Sky’ opens with a Stravinsky-like flute figure and Mollestad’s processed voice, and builds textures as the saxes arrive. Those sax duels deepen on ‘Kittiwakes in Gusts’ while Mollestad kicks in with a delirious across the bar lines theme, though it is Eberson’s superb keys (reminiscent of Dave MacRae) that summon the storm. ‘With 418 (Stairs in Storms)’ the hurricanoes [sic] yaw, swell and resolve, with Mollestad laying down a mournful yet seductive ‘Glistening Glydnebourne’ type theme to which the saxes bring their own dead march.

Until now Mollestad the guitarist has been content to lay down colours and themes, but with the climactic ‘High Hair’ she lays down a monster riff and solo that will dissolve the very foundations of your home. With further projects in the pipeline, Mollestad is indeed an artist of the future: but with Tempest Revisited, she is of vigorous significance today.