totally enthralling with wonderful melodies in plentiful supply and all delivered with the bassist’s marvellous tone and arranger’s touch.
ECM 2826 / 751 2580
Arild Andersen (double bass, electronics)
Recorded live June 18, 2020 at Victoria National Jazzscene, Oslo
It is surprising to note that in a long career at the forefront of contemporary bass playing along with an extensive discography that this is Andersen’s first solo double bass recording. It is, needless to say, totally enthralling with wonderful melodies in plentiful supply and all delivered with the bassist’s marvellous tone and arranger’s touch.
Recorded live, with a note that double bass and effects pedals are the only instruments used and that “all the loops were produced live, during the performance”. This is a superb album that does not just demonstrate Andersen’s talents as a virtuoso bass player, but serve to illustrate how, in the right hands, a solo performance on just about instrument can be a transformative process and that loops and pedals are not merely gimmicks but a useful and valid tool for making music.
In skilled hands such as Andersen’s, it is easy to forget that you are listening to just one musician creating music of depth and beauty right in front of your very eyes, or in this case ears. The loops and electronics are secondary to the inventive playing and sonorous sound of Andersen’s bass, and it is only of repeated listening that the complexity and ingenuity of the loops and percussive effects become fully apparent.
The repertoire is as wide as one would expect from a musician with such a varied career and playing experiences to call upon. His own compositions are represented with a couple of pieces that have appeared previously on ECM albums under the bassist’s name in ‘Mira’ and ‘Dreamhorse’ that he recorded with the trio featuring drummer Paolo Vinaccia and saxophonist Tommy Smith. The title track is also featured a part of a medley of three pieces with Albert Ayler’s ‘Ghosts’ and the traditional Norwegian melody ‘Old Stev’.
This ability to bring in seemingly disparate compositions into play from the traditional, through to jazz standards (there is a lovely reading of ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square) and free jazz compositions from Albert Ayler’s ‘Ghosts’ to Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’ and ‘Song for Che’ by Charlie Haden is skilfully handled by Andersen in a programme that retains excitement and interest with a uniform continuity that is reassuring.
The lone piece that was not recorded live is ‘Peace Universal’ that was written by Bob Moses. It was sent to Anderson by the composer, who had also sent it to a selection of other bassists asking if they would record their own version of the melody for an album he was planning. Working on the music in his home studio, Moses’s original melody has been transformed in Anderson’s arrangement with the resonant sound of the double bass framed by electronics and a string arrangement that gives the music an eery and other worldly feeling. Placed at the beginning of the album at the suggestion of Manfred Eicher is serves as a wonder prologue to the live tracks that follow.
With a playing time that is just shy of 35 minutes there are those who will feel short changed. Surely it is better to be left wanting more than being swamped by an hour plus of music that one cannot always find the time to listen to in its entirety, and in the order determined by the musician to best convey the story within the music.
