A new EP is quite the breakthrough
Not every release is intended as a statement. The latest instalment in Emil Brandqvist’s ongoing Three Songs series arrives instead as another concise dispatch from a parallel strand of the Swedish drummer-composer’s work, one less concerned with the established language of the piano trio than with the broader possibilities afforded by the studio.
Issued digitally through Hamburg label Skip Records, best known for championing best selling Tingvall Trio down the years, Three Songs – Part IV follows a path that Brandqvist has been exploring intermittently in recent years. While his reputation has largely been built through the success of the Emil Brandqvist Trio, whose melodic and often cinematic approach of that isn’t too much of a hackneyed idea has attracted a sizeable European audience, the Three Songs releases have increasingly functioned as a space in which different instrumental colours and compositional ideas can be explored away from the expectations attached to the trio format.
That distinction has become more noticeable following the release of Poems for Travellers earlier this year. The album marked a return to the core acoustic identity of the trio, placing piano, double bass and drums firmly at the centre of the music. Three Songs – Part IV, by contrast, resumes a separate thread, one in which arrangement and texture often take precedence over ensemble interaction.
Across its three tracks, the EP demonstrates Brandqvist’s continuing interest in expanding his palette. Opener ‘Laminariales’, first issued as a digital single, unfolds with a quiet sense of restraint, its dialogue between clarinet and flugelhorn creating an understated chamber-jazz atmosphere. The emphasis is less on development than on mood, with the arrangement allowing the individual timbres of the instruments to remain clearly exposed.
‘Sigge the Farmdog’ introduces a different energy. Built around a more active rhythmic framework, the piece places Brandqvist’s drumming in a more prominent role while incorporating distinctive guitar textures that lend the music a subtly different character from the melodic lyricism more commonly associated with the trio recordings.
The closing ‘With All My Love’ moves into more ambient territory. Constructed around the simultaneous recording of two guitars, the piece unfolds patiently, favouring space and atmosphere over overt narrative. It is perhaps the track that most clearly illustrates the purpose of the series itself: a setting in which Brandqvist can pursue ideas that sit adjacent to, rather than directly within, his principal artistic vehicle.
Born in 1977 and educated at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg, Brandqvist founded the Emil Brandqvist Trio in 2012 alongside Finnish pianist Tuomas A. Turunen and Swedish bassist Max Thornberg. Since the release of Breathe Out in 2013, the group has established itself as one of the more successful contemporary European jazz ensembles, aided by the commercial breakthrough of Seascapes and a succession of recordings that have found audiences well beyond the traditional jazz market.
Viewed in that context, the significance of Three Songs – Part IV lies less in any dramatic stylistic departure than in its quiet continuation of an alternative creative process. Rather than seeking to redefine his musical identity, Brandqvist appears to be broadening it incrementally, using the format of the short digital release to test new combinations of instruments, textures and moods.
The result is a modest but revealing addition to a body of work that increasingly seems to operate along two complementary tracks: the established trio, and the more open-ended studio projects that continue to expand the frame around it.
