Stein Urheim, Strandebarm, Hubro

From 2016. There’s a hapless DJ I sometimes listen to who is always banging on about ‘texture’ in the music he plays, odd usually as most of it is swing and bop and the ‘texture’ is nearly always very much a case of what you hear is what you get. …

Published: 1 Dec 2019. Updated: 4 years.

From 2016. There’s a hapless DJ I sometimes listen to who is always banging on about ‘texture’ in the music he plays, odd usually as most of it is swing and bop and the ‘texture’ is nearly always very much a case of what you hear is what you get.

He’d probably hate this latest record of guitarist Stein Urheim’s recorded in a Norwegian church in the town he lives and which lends its name to the album although ironically it is full of ‘texture’, a spacey string and air odyssey that he has cooked up by overdubbing himself on a whole range of complementary instruments that besides conventional guitar include banjo and mandolin, and he also manages to factor in a few loops and lots of delay for extra measure, only the synths of Jørgen Træen for company returning from an earlier album released in 2014.

Music like Strandebarm hangs there in the air, quite placeless and still in a way, and without much or anything in the way of strict rhythm or anything beyond sketched-out melody it’s like hearing work in progress as much as a finished piece. And that’s no bad thing: the experimentalism of Urheim’s approach kept intact and alive despite the process and amount of work needed to finesse the sound. But there is also something a little bloodless about the hovering strings and slices of reverb, the slowly crystallising ideas taking their time so much so that the collected sound somehow recedes into an ambient cloud in the background and never really achieves great impact. But if you’re after texture, the Nordic variety, then you’ve definitely come to the right place.

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Vimala Rowe, John Etheridge, Out of the Sky, Dyad

From 2016. The words ‘Blue’ and ‘breeze’, a long exhalation, a mood instantly captured, the bluesy moan of voice and hum of guitar. Out of the Sky is an album of nine tracks that frames stark themes, originals and arranged treatments of traditional …

Published: 1 Dec 2019. Updated: 3 years.

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From 2016. The words ‘Blue’ and ‘breeze’, a long exhalation, a mood instantly captured, the bluesy moan of voice and hum of guitar.

Out of the Sky is an album of nine tracks that frames stark themes, originals and arranged treatments of traditional African music and jazz standards as a unity. A cinematic version of an Aramaic prayer draws together the ancient culture and modern sufferings of Syria and a harrowing version of Ellington’s ‘Solitude’ are tracks for replaying most.

Largely duets (the double bass of Dudley Phillips pops up on two tracks) the wiry sometimes desert-distant Ry Cooder-like earthy quality of the veteran Soft Machine guitarist is a calm held in reserve, a landmark sound that the heart-on-sleeve carefully calibrated passion of Rowe leans in to.

The singer, who can swoop to gather up meaningful undertones, manipulating the silences, or reach high to scrape off glassy accented shards raw with expressive powerful resource, and Etheridge from their first meeting walking on Hampstead Heath have clearly bonded on this persuasive studio album recorded last summer, the majestic stillness the pair create on a moving appropriately angelic version of Kenyan singer Fadhili William’s ‘Malaika’ famously covered by Miriam Makeba where Rowe inescapably and elsewhere on the album is reminiscent of Sibongile Khumalo and she stands comparison with the best role models, remarkably complete for such a relative newcomer. Jazz singer discovery of 2016 so far? You bet.

The album moves to a vintage climax with the more familiar Bird belovèd ‘Dark Shadows’, and a version of ‘Detour Ahead’ a song that goes back to Woody Herman days (there is also a fine early version of the song by cult favourite Jackie Paris on YouTube), the only new coordinates required simply ones that involve a journey of the imagination.