The cover may be grey and populated with what looks like a murmuration of starlings but there’s nothing dull or Bird like (Charlie Parker or otherwise) about this tonally interesting trio album from one of Europe’s most pioneering contemporary jazz guitarists.
While his fellow countryman Jakob Bro may receive more profile internationally word about Mikkel Ploug has long got out and the blend here is typical of his adventurous and iconoclastic outlook.
Truth be told this sent me off to listen to lots of Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), the great Danish classical composer of the 20th century, as some of his music is included in the blend here.
How radically different pieces like Tunge Mørke Natteskyer sound led off by drummer Sean Carpio’s flurries and steady prompting.
The choice of Billy Strayhorn’s The Star Crossed Lovers may seem apt from a different angle.
And that’s the thing with Ploug: he puts a lot of disparate things in the blender and makes them coalesce.
His guitar style may be closest in spirit to someone like Nels Cline or even Jeff Parker in Tortoise than more obvious points of comparison chiefly Bill Frisell.
But Ploug carves out his own path with a trio that nevertheless even bearing Wilco in mind aside from Cline’s more jazz rooted projects has a slacker indie rock feel to it (it’s just the double bass of fellow Dane Jeppe Skovbakke and Irishman Carpio with him).
Ploug’s own tunes have a quiet intensity to them and roam the road less travelled.
The slow to reveal itself piece Winter Lullaby I have playlisted a good deal on this site’s Spotify playlists and the guitarist describes it unusually as having been
written on a guitar that can barely be played anymore, my dad’s first acoustic instrument, really bad quality. It only sounds good when just two notes are played together, so the whole tune is written like that.
As for the title track he says – again quoted on the Canadian label Songlines website – that ‘Hope’ came out of transcribing a Craig Taborn performance, and when this almost schlager-like theme emerged I decided to see how far I could go with that, ending up in Messiaen’s 9-tone scale at the end.
He certainly keeps you guessing – and listening to lots of Nielsen!
