The Norwegian experimental trio Monkey Plot – guitarist Christian Winther, bassist Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard and drummer Jan Martin Gismervik (drums) – has released four albums between 2013 and 2016, toured Europe, Japan and South America, and collaborated with Swedish sound artist-poet Pär Thörn (Here I Sit, Knowing All of This, Hubro, 2016), Norwegian free jazz pioneer Frode Gjerstad (who recorded the trio’s debut album at his home in Stavanger, Løv Og Lette Vimpler, Gigafon, 2013, and played with the trio in the self-titled album, FMR, 2015) and the duo Vilde & Inga.
Monkey Plot began exploring its archive during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 and collected over twenty concert recordings from Japanese jazz clubs, Hungarian basements, Argentinian backyards, Czech and Chilean galleries, tired German apartments, and small Norwegian bookstores. Out of these recordings, about three hours of eleven performances (one with synth player Johan Lindvall ) were selected, capturing Monkey Plot in its moments of imperfection, when squeaky chairs, chatty audiences, barking dogs, and clinking glasses joined.
These recordings were sent to producer and celebrated noise musician Lasse Marhaug, and he cut and shaped the raw material, re-recorded everything through his TEAC X2000 tape machine, mixed, mastered, produced, and designed the cover of the double album 2014-2019. Thörn contributed a poem in Swedish (that begins, according to Google Translate, with: A person steps out of / grammar. / Someone clears their throat. / The documents speak. / Who sharpens the silence until / knives emerge from the falling suitcases?) The album is released on Winther’s label, Earthly Habit, as a limited edition single LP plus extended digital download for the whole double album. Mokey Plot will regroup after a five-year hiatus to celebrate the release of this album, for only one performance at Oslo’s Kafé Hærverk, where it played its last performance.
2014-2019 reflects on Monkey Plot’s restless yet diverse sonic searches, the intimate free improvised sets, and evolution from the acoustic, spacious interplay to the electric, more dense and tense one. Marhaug cleverly decided to avoid clear, structured starting points or ends on the album’s four sides, which have no titles. He suggested a brilliant, «unbalanced balance» sensibility with expressive jumps back and forth that allow the listener to experience Monkey Plot’s in its full exploratory, uncompromising glory. «It functions more like a photo album, cuts of different rooms over time, but given a larger form that flows and contains a logic», Marhaug concluded. 2014-2019 provides enough reasons to continue the adventurous musical journey of Monkey Plot.
Eyal Hareuveni
Christian Skår Winther (acoustic guitar, electric guitar), Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard (double bass, electric bass), Jan Martin Gismervik (drums, percussion)
