This is music made by someone who’s been paying close attention to what moves him for a very long time, and hasn’t stopped.
April Records
Frede Holger Thorsen – Piano; Jesper Lørup – Drums; Martin Brunbjerg – Double Bass
Something delicate runs through Kosmos Trio …and the Sun. That’s not the same as fragile — this is control, not caution. Frede Holger Thorsen’s piano doesn’t so much play notes as set them down carefully, the way you’d set down something that might break, and the trio around him listens hard enough to make it look easy. The record that results is lovely almost by default.
This is the trio’s second record, though the lineup around Thorsen has changed — new bass, new drums since 2022’s Brev Til En Ven. The songs still come mostly from his pen, so the character holds. Recording live in one room over two days leaves nowhere to hide, and you can feel three people leaning toward each other to make sure nobody’s left standing alone.
Thorsen said “The Moon” was probably his favorite track on the record. The strong melody has high clinking piano notes that resemble the sound of a champagne glass cracking mid-toast, the bass laughing low and warm beneath it, brushes shoring up the edges so nothing spills.
“Clairvoyance” opens eerily with squeaks, scrapes dragging across the bass fretboard and drums quietly insistent alongside. A lonely piano enters, pauses, before a cascade of notes slowly repeats and evolves, as if they’re trying to be understood rather than simply heard. Left piano hand and bass band together, before single, solitary piano notes go looking for a way to take off — like something leaving the nest for the first time. The flight is short. It promises more.
Piano and bass wander the lower register together on the title track, before the piano steps out gracefully into higher note phrases. It’s almost like a slow dance you’d want to share with someone you like. This has a big open sound. Everyone’s playing beautifully but they’re all around the edges, keeping the music centered. There’s something melancholy running through the piano — like a man recovering from a loss, relieved it’s over, wanting badly to make people happy with his music.
“Beautiful 9” turns lighter — piano, bass, and drums passing phrases back and forth, cyclical, like breath moving in and out, easy and unhurried. The drums shine in the details here, fills dropping in, cymbals catching light, while the piano repeats a melodic line before turning inward, listening to itself, growing more sure of where it wants to go.
“Ballad” moves with more rhythm than its name implies — bass and drums lean melodic here, more than usual, while the piano turns percussive. “For a Minute” opens with all three voices together, the piano reaching upward in short ascending lines, almost hymn-like, before Brunbjerg’s bass takes over, thumping and low, pretty despite the weight of it.
Bassist Brunbjerg named his composition “Stow and Latch” after a sign he saw on the overhead bins on a plane. The piano enters with single notes set down gingerly until bass and drums swell up around it, arms wrapping the melody and carrying it home.
Thorsen drew the cover art himself, a picture made when he was just ten years old, and wrote the liner notes too. Somehow that fits. This is music made by someone who’s been paying close attention to what moves him for a very long time, and hasn’t stopped.
