Given the historical output of the Hubro label, this release truly comes as something of a surprise. The expansive personnel of the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra provide an interesting foil to the piano / synth work of Christian Wallumrød.
The four tracks – intended to be listened to a single, 50-minute piece – are each untiled, beyond ‘Parts 1-4’. The first part is built around a fairly simple, straightforward and melodic, vaguely jazz-pop piano motif. It sounds like the introduction to a mundane 80s American sit-com, but aside from the addition of brass and a key change, not a lot happens over the course of the eight and a half minutes.
‘Untitled Arpeggios and Pulses’ isn’t really an album concerned with explicit drama, but is constructed around pulsing loops, which sometimes jar and always nag at the psyche. In the main, the pieces combine to create a laid-back minimalist downtown urban jazz atmosphere. It’s evocative of a scene that’s played at a leisurely pace, cool and hazy, the soundtrack to a space on a side-street, away from the hustle and bustle of the main drag – although the final track shatters it all with surging waves of stop / start discord.
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Clattering, woozy passages, and sections so quiet as to be barely more than silence aside, this is an album that frequently concedes to convention album, although of course these things are relative – because then again, it’s hardly a smooth and easy ride.
Trondheim Jazz Orchestra / Christian Wallumrød - Untitled Arpeggios and Pulses Online
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