Name of the Wind is the second album of young Norwegian double bass player-composer Erlend Olderskog Albertsen (who also plays the soprano sax and sings, and also runs the Dugand Records) as a bandleader, following RødssalG nEEn GlassdøR (A Glass Door, Dugand, 2018). Albertsen, who played in the short-lived outfits Filosofer and Akmee and plays in Sanskriti Shrestha’s Avatar, formed a new band, the electro-acoustic quintet Basspace, that explores musical landscapes with sounds, rhythms, and instruments from traditional music in Norway, North India and Morocco on the horizon.

Basspace is no ordinary jazz quintet, though all musicians spring from the Trondheim jazz scene. Violist-Hardanger fiddler Ellie Mäkelä is the only one who plays a traditional instrument—the other musicians except Albertsen alternate on synths. Double bass player Egil Kalman (of Marthe Lea Band) plays on a modular synth while Albertsen’s brother, drummer Simon Olderskog Albertsen (of Espen Berg Trio and Wako), and pianist player Hogne Kleiberg on other synths, and all ornament the music with borderless colors.

The music moves naturally and mixes tastefully spicy ingredients from an Eastern drone meditation to a Norwegian space-prog dance and again to a contemplative and spacious Nordic jazz piece or Gnawa-like call-and-answer dynamics as if the geographical and cultural borders were shortened and disappeared in some kind of a magical time machine. The spirit of this music is optimistic and obviously, inclusive and encourages emphatic-collective improvisations on infectious themes. Basspace has established its own clever and expressive sonic identity, that insists that there are many answers to the impossible kōan: is this where jazz is?

Eyal Hareuveni

Ellie Mäkelä (viola, Hardanger fiddle), Egil Kalman (modular synthesizer, double bass), (drums, synthesizer), Erlend Olderskog Albertsen (double bass, soprano saxophone, vocal), Hogne Kleiberg (piano, synthesizer), Simen Olderskog Albertsen (synthesizer)