You wiz through the tunes. Maybe they need extra layers of complication for once. But hold it: the quartet have distilled a jazz rock swirl of a sound veering into the free that goes a little edgy in places right down to its bones without making all this too naked or feel undernourished.
But yes by ‘Brockenspekter’ the heat is on a bit more if that’s what the guys who look a bit like power tool instructors ready for a trip down to the DIY store mean, and there is no danger of this being a snoozathon when tenor saxist André Kassen gets stuck in and is a bit more ballsy.
Recorded at somewhere called Flerbruket out in the country a decent drive from Oslo, the only tune that doesn’t grab me is ‘Lakenskrekk’ which doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue and is far weedier than the rest.
But overall it’s a more than decent heart on sleeve affair studded with strong simply sketched out tunes of Aadal’s and an agreeable organic sound world.
It’s playing that isn’t afraid to be melodic or give the tunes space when they need some.
- Aadal dates coming up: Frederiks, Liverpool, 4 March; Green Note, London, 5 March; and the Holloway, Norwich – 6 March.
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Alcyona Mick and Liam Noble, Distant Plains: The Planets Revisited, Caliban Sounds/One Little Independent ***1/2
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