Pete, I love this album and I love Hedvig Mollestad's music - I saw her trio live recently in London and it was brilliant. Like you, I didn't love this CD when I first heard it, but after a few listens I now love it!
Watched her trio band play in a stave church a couple of summers ago. Good stuff. They describe themselves as Jazz Sabbath, and I think it's quite fitting.
Great album I picked this up after hearing about it from Ken on the Professor's Picks this year. it's definitely one of my favourite albums of 2023. I feel it also has a spacey vibe to it.
Wow! I wasn't expecting to see THIS album reviewed here and I'm very glad I see it here. This happens to be my #2 album for the whole year across all genres. It's an amazing album, 10/10 for me and probably in the top-10 of the decade so far. Of course taste is subjective. And this is my review on it: At number 2 of the year I designate a jazz fusion album that deviates from the typical forms of the idiom, first of all instrumentally since there are no brass/horns, no bowed strings and no bass(!) with Storløkken's left hand holding some tonics in the slow parts a la Manzarek. Besides that, in most tracks we have a structural inversion of the usual. Where in fusion we have theme presentation, deconstruction/jamming and sometimes reprise, here we find a kraut approach where it starts abstractly with improvisations to tighten up along the way and end up with some motoric 4/4 theme as if we were in the mid 70s somewhere in Germany. All in all we have no contact with the British sound and thus no connection with nu jazz despite the presence of keyboards which ultimately refer more to psychedelia, while, despite the Norwegian origin, no contact with the Scandinavian ECM type sound either. Many times in the jam the drummer is the only one playing pure jazz, with the keyboardist playing Hammond like a more virtuoso Jon Lord and Hedvig Mollestad leading the trio playing pure kraut. I learned about Mollestad with last year's album "Maternity Leave" in which she again took fusion and drove it in other directions exploring doom jazz and avant-garde. This year she is delving into kraut. It's definitely worthy to dig further into her discography.
I have a bunch of Mollestad's prior stuff but this one's a bit too far "out there" for me - I need more 'focus' in the music for lack of a better term. "Jagged/Ragged" is on target...
Listen here: hedvigmollestadweejuns.bandcamp.com/album/weejuns
Pete, I love this album and I love Hedvig Mollestad's music - I saw her trio live recently in London and it was brilliant. Like you, I didn't love this CD when I first heard it, but after a few listens I now love it!
Watched her trio band play in a stave church a couple of summers ago. Good stuff. They describe themselves as Jazz Sabbath, and I think it's quite fitting.
Have Hedvig Mollestad - Ekhidna, it's my favorite Jazz Rock Album with some fast rocking Songs.
Will try the new one.
Great album
I picked this up after hearing about it from Ken on the Professor's Picks this year. it's definitely one of my favourite albums of 2023.
I feel it also has a spacey vibe to it.
Will check this out thank you for posting
Another 3.5/ nothing wrong with that. Thx for your time. Pete 👍💯
Wow! I wasn't expecting to see THIS album reviewed here and I'm very glad I see it here. This happens to be my #2 album for the whole year across all genres. It's an amazing album, 10/10 for me and probably in the top-10 of the decade so far. Of course taste is subjective. And this is my review on it:
At number 2 of the year I designate a jazz fusion album that deviates from the typical forms of the idiom, first of all instrumentally since there are no brass/horns, no bowed strings and no bass(!) with Storløkken's left hand holding some tonics in the slow parts a la Manzarek. Besides that, in most tracks we have a structural inversion of the usual. Where in fusion we have theme presentation, deconstruction/jamming and sometimes reprise, here we find a kraut approach where it starts abstractly with improvisations to tighten up along the way and end up with some motoric 4/4 theme as if we were in the mid 70s somewhere in Germany.
All in all we have no contact with the British sound and thus no connection with nu jazz despite the presence of keyboards which ultimately refer more to psychedelia, while, despite the Norwegian origin, no contact with the Scandinavian ECM type sound either. Many times in the jam the drummer is the only one playing pure jazz, with the keyboardist playing Hammond like a more virtuoso Jon Lord and Hedvig Mollestad leading the trio playing pure kraut.
I learned about Mollestad with last year's album "Maternity Leave" in which she again took fusion and drove it in other directions exploring doom jazz and avant-garde. This year she is delving into kraut. It's definitely worthy to dig further into her discography.
I have a bunch of Mollestad's prior stuff but this one's a bit too far "out there" for me - I need more 'focus' in the music for lack of a better term. "Jagged/Ragged" is on target...
Cheers Wolf . Tony from Australia