feature photo: Anna Rosenlund
Picking up where fellow trumpet player Jon Hassell left off, Norwegian electronic music pioneer Nils Petter Molvær took Hassell’s ambient & EDM experiments a step or two further, folding in house, hip hop, rock in advancing a way that jazz could move forward and continue to be a viable, modern music form on the vanguard in the twenty-first century.
KHMER Live in Bergen (Edition Records) is a concert celebration of Molvær’s groundbreaking Khmer album that still sounds exciting and ultramodern today. But it’s also just as much a revisit of Khmer‘s 2000 follow-up Solid Ether, which furthered the explorations of its predecessor.
Nearly all of the musicians present on those two vital releases participated in this concert, most notably frequent collaborator Eivind Aarset, who as a guitarist with a complete mastery of sonic visuals is virtually the guitar version of Molvær. Drummer Rune Arnesen was also present on both of those albums. Second drummer Per Lindvall, Pål ‘DJ Strangefruit’ Nyhus and bassist Audun Erlien were onboard for Solid Ether. Only Jan Bang (live sampling) joined Molvær afterwards.
Sure, these tracks were studio creations, but how well does it translate to the stage? Quite well, actually. A brooding, lumbering funk groove, “Song of Sand” is an frictionless blend of jazz, hip hop and various underground club music styles where the smooth current is crashed by Aarset’s metal-adjacent guitar brushstrokes. Erlien’s bass on the house number “Platonic Years” adds an organic element that was not present on the original, his low lines anchoring the harmony was underneath Molvær’s gliding lead lines.
“Kakonita” proceeds with Molvær’s mostly unadorned trumpet, making vulnerable lyrical lines that are remindful that he’s an accomplished trumpet player first and foremost. “Ligotage” is built around a hard beat harnessed by a dub bass line. Both Molvær and Aarset unleash scary, voluminous noise from their respective instruments, momentarily disrupting the steady, subdued island vibe.
“Vilderness” is an archetypal Molvær tune, ambient at its core but given a hard kick in the pants by putting a driving beat on it and then the leader proceeds to blow his electronically altered horn like a freight train. Erlien’s rubbery and rangy bass makes “Solid Ether” the funkiest entry of this batch, even forming a third lead voice alongside Molvær and Aarset. The tension lets up for the lonely sonority of “On Stream,” providing that trumpet space to make rhapsodic expressions.
The dramatic “Tløn” is stretched five minutes longer than the studio edition, long enough for fuller development and individual formulations over hard breakbeats.
“Maja” is the lone selection not taken from Molvær’s twin towers of achievement. Introduced just two years prior to the concert on the 2023 release Certainty of Tides with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, it’s not backed by an symphony orchestra this time but rather, a reggae-minded rhythm section. The sounds of strings are still part of the sonic makeup thanks to Bang’s sampling.
Nils Petter Molvær is a jazz musician but even more so a soundscape architect, and a very good one at that. KHMER Live in Bergen shows his uniquely meticulous electronic instrumental music that finds beauty in the clash between the calm and the calamitous can be faithfully executed outside of a studio.
Order KHMER Live in Bergen from Bandcamp.
*** Nils Petter Molvær CD’s and vinyl on Amazon ***
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