The Oslo-based trio of Belgian pianist Jonas Cambien (leader of his trio and the duo Simiskina), double bass player Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard (of Monkey Plot and Delish, and with Signe Emmeluth), and drummer Dag Erik Knedal Andersen (of Cortex, who recorded with Frode Gjerstad, John Butcher and Signe Emmeluth) is by no means a classic piano trio.
These experienced improvisers harness their eclectic creative tendencies for a multifaceted debut album, The Ear Behind the Airport, recorded at Børsen Kulturhus, an artistic multipurpose mecca run by Guro Moe and Håvard Skaset. This free improvising trio already sounds like a working band that has established its powerful and uncompromising aesthetics as well as its non-hierarchical dynamics, echoing the British school of free improvisations and free jazz, with mysterious drones, and ecstatic grooves. Cambien, in his first recording with Nergaard and Andersen, explores the inside of the prepared piano most of the time; Andersen contributes surgically precise pointillism; and Nergaard (who recorded before with Andersen) anchors the commotion, and together they suggest an impressive sense of consonance and texture treatment that makes the music tactile.
The cover art was designed by Lasse Marhaug, based on «Kontor I Stockholm (1994)» by the influential Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk. It corresponds with this trio’s aesthetics that claims looking at the familiar with fresh perspectives may be magical and liberating.
Black Cat Mountain documents Cambien’s first-ever duo performance with powerhouse drummer Paal Nilssen-Love was recorded at Blow Out! Festival at Victoria Nasjonal Jazzscene in Oslo in August 2020, when the world was in lockdown. It is released in a collectors’ limited edition of 300 10” numbered vinyls in different colors, with hand-made cover art by Nilssen-Love and Cambien with spray-paint and collage using cassette tape, broken vinyl records, tea-bags, dried fish, stage tape, old posters, and magazines, and signed by them.
As can be expected, this meeting begins with an explosive note. Nilssen-Love pushes Cambien to the most intense, powerful sonic terrains on the title piece. But, Cambien is a worthy partner for this kind of raw and vibrant blowout games, and later, and especially on the following «Soft Rope», he enjoys using his own bag of tricks and exchanges with Nilssen-Love unpredictable, exploratory, playful, and exotic twists, with Nilssen-Love adding more percussive instruments, and Cambien adding his soprano sax and melodica. A life-affirming performance that expresses energetic resistance to all forms of closure.
Eyal Hareuveni
Jonas Cambien (piano, soprano sax, melodica), Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard (double bass), Dag Erik Knedal Andersen (drums), Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)
