One of the more interesting musical diversions for me in recent years has been Eivind Aarset. I first heard his music about 5 years ago when I picked up a concert recording off of Dime. A long time collaborator with Nils Pettter Molvaer of the Nordic “Nu Jazz” movement, Aarset’s music is a sublime mixture of ambient soundscapes, drums-n-bass rhythms, and guitar tones that range from patented Stratocaster clean to downright nasty to “that can’t be a guitar”.
In addition to grabbing Aarset concerts whenever they popped up on Dime, I started buying his studio releases, beginning with his debut “Electronic Noire” and continuing up through 2007’s “Sonic Codex”. While most of his live shows that I had heard had been in a trio format, the tours following Sonic Codex found Aarset’s band having expanded to a sextet. The resulting density of the sound is very compelling.
Now I have a long standing preference for live music, and enjoy artists who don’t try to recreate the studio version of a song onstage but instead make it something new every time it’s played. (The studio version of the Dead’s “Dark Star” was 2:40, on 1969’s Live/Dead it’s 23:18 - that’s making something new!). Aarset’s music takes on a very different breadth and scope when played live.
The CD starts off in a very ambient space with “Electromoers”, which flows into an epic 10 minute “Electromagnetic” that builds from a subtle melody to an all out industrial attack. Some seriously heavy shit. In fact the most noticeable difference between the studio versions of these songs and their presentation here is the huge dynamic range, the contrast between the ambient valleys and the intense peaks of the music.
Drøbak Saray and Still Changing are two other particularly strong songs, with Drøbak Saray having a nice middle-eastern influenced melodic hook. But this CD isn’t about melody, it’s about soundscapes of varying intensity. One of my favorite releases of 2010 for sure.
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