Kjetil Husebø: Years of Ambiguity
Author: Tony Benjamin
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Arve Henriksen (t, elec) |
Label: |
NXN Recordings |
Magazine Review Date: |
August/2023 |
Media Format: |
CD, DL |
Catalogue Number: |
NXN4007 |
RecordDate: |
Rec. date not stated |
This enigmatically-titled album opens with ‘Inhale’, an all-Norwegian collaboration between composer/producer Kjetil Husebø, guitarist Eivind Aarset and trumpeter Arve Henriksen. It is a rising and falling web of electronic sounds with moments of sudden-ness from Aarset and an underlying drone from which Henriksen’s trumpet emerges in a laconic flourish.
Henriksen reappears on ‘Exhale’, the final track, where his fluting tone refrain transposes and evolves with cues from Husebø’s synth. A grumbling undertow and whistling electronic layers come and go, finally resolved by what might be processed voices. In between those two are five tracks of ambient drone electronica, each atmospheric in its own way, albeit lacking in much dynamic variety. It is tempting to think in terms of video game soundtracks – ‘Modernität’ evokes machinery approaching through a long tunnel, ‘Strong’ suggests a sky full of low flying aircraft over a bleak mountain range, something portentuous is creeping closer throughout ‘Down’… For this project, Husebø has eschewed his grand piano and the jazzier exchanges of 2022’s Sequential Stream duo with Henriksen for the more monochromatic disciplines of textured electronica. Its carefully assembled, abstract sonic architecture is very much Radio 3 late-night stuff but the more kinetic life of the three collaborative tracks (Aarset also appears on the more chaotic ‘Reconciliation’) suggests a Punkt-style remix might be an interesting development.
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