Karl Seglem – Norskjazz.no (2009) [LINN FLAC 24bit/44,1kHz]

The traditional music of Norway is a springboard for the improvisations of tenor saxophone and ram’s horn player Karl Segrum. While Dirty Linen praised him for his “atonally jazzy meanderings (that) bring traditional Norwegian folk music squarely into the 21st century”, Cadence explained, “at the heart is passionate yet restrained blowing”, and Listen to Norway Magazine proclaimed “we are witnessing the devil fiddler’s answer to John Coltrane”. With his 25th album, ‘Norskjazz.no’, Karl Seglem presents us with an amazing jazz record in a class all of its own.

The album‘s title, Norskjazz.no (Norwegian jazz now), already hints at the tongue-in-cheek humor that can easily be heard in these compositions. Karl Seglem is a musician who simply cannot be pigeonholed – and with the title alone making such a statement, it is inevitable that the somewhat bewildered question should arise: Is this contemporary Norwegian jazz? The answer is irrelevant, and even amuses Seglem: “As long as people keep wondering about it, the music lives, and maybe it can expand our ‘inner space’.”With the Eple Trio, the saxophonist born in 1961 got significantly younger musicians into the studio for norsk jazz no. Andreas Ulvo (1983) on the piano, Sigurd Hole (1981) on the bass and Jonas Howden Sjøvaag (1978) on drums are all not only excellent instrumentalists, but exactly the right people for this project. Starting with the “Portugal Song” the four musicians develop a level of suspense that is relentlessly maintained til the last strains of “Sein Song”.
When the last notes have faded away and you more or less get back to ‘the real world’, the sound of this album still has a grip on you. All seven songs on the album are carried by an overwhelming mood of dreaminess, and the phantasmagoric music they create here is performed by the four Scandinavians with an ease that simply fascinates its listeners. The way the quartet builds up the suspense on Stengde Dører, for example, is captivating and liberating at the same time.
Karl Seglem, together with the Eple Trio, has managed to put together a homogeneous selection of music that has its roots in classical jazz, represents contemporary jazz in the very best of spirits, and points to the future in a big way – this music will not have lost an iota of its fascination in many years to come.

Tracklist:
01 – Portugalsong
02 – Nattsong
03 – Aret Hallar
04 – Song for To
05 – Stengde Dorer
06 – Lull
07 – Sein Song

Download:

mqs.link_KarlSeglemNrskjazz.n2009LINN24441.rar