The Norwegian quartet Oker – trumpeter Torstein Lavik Larsen, double bass player Adrian Fiskum Myhr, guitarist Frederik Rasten, and drummer-percussionist Jan Martin Gismervik – operates as an experimental, inquisitive, and minimalist acoustic ensemble with a distinct stoic approach to sound production, devoted to the amalgamation of improvised and composed modes of expression. Oker’s music combines fine-tuned tonalities, deconstructed grooves, acoustic noise, and other sonic events, taking its rather conventional instrumentation as a point of departure. Oker’s free-form textures constantly shift and coexist with responsive and spontaneous gestures, creating a coherent musical ecosystem that can be airy or dense, dry or blooming.
Aerial is Oker’s third album. It was recorded at Børsen Kulturhus in Tangen in February 2024 by sax player and sound engineer Espen Reinertsen, who also mixed the album. The album features two extended free improvised pieces with titles referring to meteorological and planetary phenomena – «Equinoctial Tide» and «Crepuscular Rays».
Oker offers quiet, almost dream-like music that evolves in its own organic, stoic accord, developed across a decade of extensive touring. Larsen, Myhr, Rasten, and Gismervik gently sculpt vulnerable, resonant acoustic textures, employing the full sonic palettes of their respective instruments, including extended breathing, bowing, and percussive techniques. The titles of the pieces hint at the subtle yet detailed, minimalist tidal cycles, challenged by equally subtle and detailed but stubborn frictions and micro-chaoses that intensify in the second piece. These deeply immersive and haunting pieces aim to echo our planet and its urgent, stressful meteorological reality, and yield both consistency and perpetual change.
The cover artwork, «contours of consciousness», by Candian, Berlin-based visual artist Mareike Yin-Yee Lee, beautifully captures the elusive essence of Oker’s aesthetics.
Eyal Hareuveni
Torstein Lavik Larsen (trumpet, percussion), Adrian Fiskum Myhr (double bass), Fredrik Rasten (6- and 12-string acoustic guitars), Jan Martin Gismervik (drums, percussion)
