Prolific Norwegian double bass player Christian Meaas Svendsen likes to stretch his sonic horizons and on «Finding ourselves in all things» he found an excellent partner for another adventure – Estonian Katariin Raska who plays the Estonian bagpipes, torupill. Meaas Svendsen played before with Raska’s band ÄIO that released a self-titled album in 2014, but the duo format allows these intrepid musicians to experiment with abstract sounds and extended bowing and breathing techniques.

«Finding ourselves in all things» features two distinct extended pieces. The first one, «Melting with butterflies», is a hyperactive, super-intense and hysterical, avant-futuristic folk piece. Meaas Svendsen and Raska sound as pushing all boundaries but always on the verse of a total meltdown complete chaos. The second one, «The way mountains make love», is completely different. This is a patient, meditative drone piece, and both Meaas Svendsen, with an impressive arco work, and Raska focus on the depth and resonant vibrations and timbral qualities of their instruments in the big studio space. This piece suggests a sense of out-of-time, sometimes sounds archaic but, still, totally organic with its manner of weaving and exploring slow-shifting, minimalist layers of sounds.

Only 34-minutes long but quite a fascinating sonic experiment.

Eyal Hareuveni

Katariin Raske (torupill), Christian Meaas Svendsen (b)