Young Swedish drummer Dennis Egberth released earlier this year his first album as a bandleader on his newly-founded label («Dennis Egberths första», 2021), featuring a quintet playing his own compositions, and now he releases his debut solo album, «Cavum Oris», consisting of eight free-improvised pieces, recorded at Örnsberg Musikstudio in Stockholm in April 2021. Egberth also did the cover artwork, as he did to his first album.

The inspiration for this solo album came about «in the space that arose in the pandemic’s isolation», and apparently has nothing to do with the oral cavity as suggested by the album’s title. Egberth plays on drums and percussion, but he also employs cleverly silence and air, body sounds and the recording space as integral parts of his own musical language. His musical imagination enables the spontaneously improvised pieces to navigate through African, gamelan,  Far-Eastern sceneries and even borrow ideas from classic piano legacy.

The eight pieces offer abstract, free-associative soundscapes and explore Egberth’s extended techniques and his usage of all parts of the drum-set to offer suggestive sounds and textures. “M1” stands out as it focuses only on the resonant qualities of the cymbals, including their overtones. The last piece «C1» distills Egberth’s unique sonic vision and sketches enigmatic and highly nuanced textures with minimalist playing.

Eyal Hareuveni

Dennis Egberth (dr, perc)