Maybe if you spent your entire life staring at Norwegian fjords and thinking about the state of your soul, you might also write 20 minute-long epic pieces of music that mess with people’s brains and take them on musical journeys to faraway places, where a Digital Delay is King and an E-Bow, Queen?
Of course, it is an assumption that guitar maestro Eivind Aarset spent his youth fjord-staring and most likely improbable, so maybe it’s a safer bet to say that this man is simply some sort of God-like genius, creating some of the most magical musical trips that the world has ever seen.
Is this over the top? Really no. The Jazz Boat that the Eivind Aarset Quartet was playing was so cold that only top-notch music could possibly have kept people from going somewhere that had invested in heaters. Appearing as part of the MOL Jazz Festival 2008, the quartet aren’t all that “jazz” at all, but rather create the sort of searing music that people listen to when they want to think or get stoned. Or think while stoned. Despite its experimental nature, melodies are still present, with the main melodic ideas built steadily in layers over the course of each piece, until they explode in your brain like the dropping of depleted uranium on civilians – making the beauty and ugliness of the world simultaneously appear in your panting, sagging excuse for a mind.
Aarset was joined by Håkon Kornstad on saxophone, Audun Erlien on bass and Wetle Holte on drums. They were all joined by a healthy splattering of electronic gadgetry, looping and distorting sounds to their creative wills.
If there was anything bad to say about the gig, then it would be that some of Aarset’s softer and more beautiful pieces were missing from the set. Maybe it is impossible to create them in such a performance, better served up in a more intimate environment? Either way, we got six pieces of such intensity and brilliance that complaining would make us sound spoilt.
Is this over the top? Really no. The Jazz Boat that the Eivind Aarset Quartet was playing was so cold that only top-notch music could possibly have kept people from going somewhere that had invested in heaters. Appearing as part of the MOL Jazz Festival 2008, the quartet aren’t all that “jazz” at all, but rather create the sort of searing music that people listen to when they want to think or get stoned. Or think while stoned. Despite its experimental nature, melodies are still present, with the main melodic ideas built steadily in layers over the course of each piece, until they explode in your brain like the dropping of depleted uranium on civilians – making the beauty and ugliness of the world simultaneously appear in your panting, sagging excuse for a mind.
Aarset was joined by Håkon Kornstad on saxophone, Audun Erlien on bass and Wetle Holte on drums. They were all joined by a healthy splattering of electronic gadgetry, looping and distorting sounds to their creative wills.
If there was anything bad to say about the gig, then it would be that some of Aarset’s softer and more beautiful pieces were missing from the set. Maybe it is impossible to create them in such a performance, better served up in a more intimate environment? Either way, we got six pieces of such intensity and brilliance that complaining would make us sound spoilt.
Ian Cook