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Available from Jazzland on Bandcamp
Dignity and discipline from newcomers Schemes Quartet
Most of the output of top Norwegian jazz label Jazzland hasn’t interested me at all this year. Odd – it usually does.
That changes right now as we approach the end of 2024. The quietly put out release of Norwegian-Danish likely lads Schemes Quartet and their album Embrace shouldn’t be missed by eagle eyed jazz fans scanning the release output of record companies at a time of year when there is a blizzard of choice. You can easily become jaded. This is an antidote.
A lot of heart – yep it’s there if you have eyes to see and ears to hear
On streaming and download formats so far.
It’s not perfect sonically – because you don’t get a fantastic sense of impact in the mix and mastering here – but more importantly the ideas and playing work. You don’t need to be blasted into submission, it’s as if to say. But this isn’t music for softies either.
Preternatural stillness in places
It kind of hints at a tendency if not full adherence to free jazz and prog. But make no mistake this is not spontaneous composition making it up as you go along or hideously all chromatic. Shapeless it ain’t, reader. But be shell shocked by the ideas and a certain stillness (especially on ‘Save Me With Love’ around the three minute mark) instead.
Not massively difficult to digest, above all there is a compositional vision and the thematic ideas make sense hitting in all ferocity emotionally the melodic side of your brain.
The most adventurous side of their playing emerges on the Narvesen piece ‘Save Me With Love.’
It sounds ”acoustic” (der, because it is) without being dry nor overly retro.
Live in performance footage example
The band hail from a Trondheim base.
Sax, piano, double bass (Bendik Løland Lundsvoll) and drums (Veslemøy Narvesen) are the building blocks.
It’s the piano playing of Oliver Skou-Due that works best on ‘Rivers,’ a track we playlisted a bit on the marlbank daily Spotify this autumn.
Schemes Quartet are a new Nordic name worth getting to know
‘Fearsome’ at the end is quite moving. The band convey a naive intensity in their poignancy and impact of the way they shape their melodies into anthemic fragments that they then proceed to develop ingeniously.
The saxist Brede Sørum has the same kind of visceral attack you find when Emma Rawicz plays but he’s in no way as fine an instrumentalist at least on this showing as the English woman. But his co-written 2 part ‘Underdog’ suite co-written with Skou-Due is poignant and meaningful,
The title track ‘Embrace’ led off by the pianist is the longest track and inures itself easily after a few listens.
Far more than a demo what a fulfilling introduction to this fine collection of young players beyond their nearest and dearest. Their forte – and it’s an oxymoron deliberately mixing metaphors weaving from a musical sense to loose idiomatic description – is their quietude in distilling emotion.
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