Norwegian experimental trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø recorded its fourth solo album at Oslo’s Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum, Tomba Emmanuelle, known for its magnificent reverb, in October 2023, with no overdubs or post-production. Sax player and sound engineer Espen Reinertsen recorded this album.

The unique, solemn location of Tomba Emmanuelle, with its frescos of existential weight, ripe with weighted imagery of love, birth, and death, as well as Nørstebø’s experimental sonic palette, playing acoustic and amplified trombone, the analog synth monotron, feedback, and sound files, allowed Nørstebø to push his instrument to its most enigmatic and extreme territories. But he did so in a thoughtful, chamber manner, given the highly resonant acoustics of Tomba Emmanuelle.

The album – a limited-edition of 175 vinyl plus a download option on Psychic Liberation’s Bandcamp page – is structured as a seven-act suite. Faint Light Blackens is an arresting, spiritual, and site-specific journey that perfectly syncs an adventurous, forward-thinking improviser, his extended, effects-laden instrument, and a one-of-a-kind space. Nørstebø used Tomba Emmanuelle to trace hidden sonic possibilities – or ancestral ghosts – within the archaic body of the trombone and reanimate these vivid spirits and their insightful, reverberating electroacoustic stories. You get the feeling that Nørstebø and his extended trombone acted as a modern-day shaman who cast powerful, immersive spells and vibrations that brought the whole Tomba Emmanuelle to life.

Eyal Hareuveni

Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø (acoustic & amplified trombone, monotron, feedback, sound files)