Losen – LOS3082
Johan Tobias Bergstrom: guitar; Jorgen Kroger Mathisen: violin; Hakon Huldt-Nystrom: bass; Thomas Antonio Debelian: percussion.
Recorded January 2024 at Urban Sound Studios, Oslo, Norway
Anyone familiar with Bergstrøm will know his ability to create elegantly melodic lines that carry the simplicity of folk tunes and the panache of Django Reinhardt’s ‘jazz manouche’. Into this mix, he and his musicians have blended additional musical traditions and styles, while maintaining a sound that is recognisably unique.
The genesis of many of the tunes here comes from a concert that Bergstrøm played for the Norwegian and Jordanian royal families in Jordan, and his hearing the local music on radios in taxis and in coffee shops.
The opening bars of ‘Karaka’ skip between so many musical styles, in terms of patterns of rhythm and lines of melody that one gets dizzy trying to trace their antecedents. Fortunately, the music has its own strong logic which means the listener simply needs to relax and follow their lead.
‘Vesta’, track 2, has Bergstrøm and Mathisen rattling through a tune that feels so fresh and light that you feel it must come directly from Reinhardt-Grapelli. It is the talent of Bergstrøm and his band that they have assimilated this tradition so completely that they are one of the few groups internationally who are able to extend and expand (rather than merely imitate) this repertoire.
On ‘Juno’, track 3, the music shifts into a different direction – with a violin line that might have Gaelic ancestry, guitar lines that float from Spain to North Africa, and rhythms that skip around the Middle East.
