Meaning ''brother'' in English Bror is yet another album that by its outcome if not (who knows?) its intention trying and largely succeeding in rewriting the jazztronica landscape via legato dreaminess, an impressionist sensibility shaped around synth and piano textures and so much more. The writing by the Swedish musician and main brain here Ivan Blomqvist is extraordinary in the way it can dovetail and morph into any number of parallel runnings whether downtempo dancefloor, long form post-Gil Evans dream jazz, subtle modalities, and on and on - ever adaptable and yet not dumbing down in the process. Tunes, pervasively haunting ('Jonas' is the most moving) are by Blomqvist and that is the main focus: he plays piano and synths and also on the record are reedist Karl Nyberg, strings and a brass section that includes trombone, trumpet and the tuba of Daniel Herskedal. Warm and reflective with that quintessential far away Nordic melancholia on tap this is not an album about swingmatism and there is nary a nod to bebop in the whole entity and yet it connects with say the way Floating Points united with Pharoah Sanders on Promises or going back further the ''futurejazz'' of Nils Petter Molvær in the 1990s on the classic, Khmer. In a sense you can feel how the seeds sown by NPM are now in full bloom. But however you frame it Bror is a vision that does not come along every day. Out on Friday - 'Jonas' is streaming.
Ivan Blomqvist photo: ivanblomqvist.com
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