This was an absolutely pleasant surprise! Our friends at áMARXE have published a Swedish band called Actionfredag who keep the spirit of the Canterbury Sound alive in the modern age. The rhythms are tight, time changes about, and the production is punchy. This is a good day to be a prog-head.
It’s rather charming to see cultures like this clash. These folks from Sindh, Pakistan, give their takes on everything from music to technology, usually with a calm, relaxed and jovial insight. In this episode, they listen to a-ha’s classic tune, “Take On Me,” and it seems they really enjoy not only the music, but the effort it took to produce the video.
Les Imprimés are a Norwegian band who offer up deep neo-soul music. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Morten Martens has a voice that would have sounded perfect for 60’s AM radio, and the production is about as authentic as it gets for the time period.
This is some fine jazz improv. The trio of a friend to this blog, guitarist Samo Salamon, working alongside bassist and ECM Records legend Arild Andersen and Ra Kalam Bob Moses, and this group have an incredible way of flowing with each other’s vibes.
Samo, of course, absolutely shreds on this album, and Arlid serves as one of the best anchors in the history of jazz, but for me, the one stealing the show is the utterly mad percussion of Ra Kalam Bob Moses, who gives this album a frantic heartbeat.
For the Halloween season, our friends at Reverse Alignment Records (now run by the Unexplained Sounds Group Empire) out of Sweden and Italy have released an album which has roughly the same spirit as such post-Industrial/dark ambient musicians as Lustmord or Steve Roach. Taphephobia is the brainchild of Norwegian composer Ketil Søraker, and on this album he is joined by the Iranian sound designer Behnoud, working on this album as IDFT.
The tones one this album are long, sweeping, and as bleak as black water pouring out of a nightmare. Perfect for the season.
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje is perhaps the most important active composer in Norway’s experimental music scene. The Trondheim native not only works with avant-garde music, but with contemporary classical, choral, experimental, electronic and even rock music.
She provides a new release which clocks in about 30 minutes of vocal improvisation which goes from quiet blips and boops to what sounds like harrowing growling and shreiks (yes, it works perfectly within the context of this music), textured with loops and the sorts of soundscapes Ratkje is known for. The release is a documentation of her virtual performance at the TUSK Virtual Festival in 2020.
It is unfortunate that we have to live with the reality of not being able to attend such concerts for a while, but composers are a very creative bunch, and their music won’t be silenced.