Third Nature is the last installment of the Danish-Polish quartet Ocean Fanfare’s long-form Nature Trilogy, and the quartet’s fourth album. First Nature – Ecological Relations (Barefoot, 2019) focused on acoustic interplay, while Second Nature – Capitalist Transformation (Barefoot, 2021) incorporated algorithmic processes and electronic augmentation into the compositional framework.
Ocean Fanfare is led by Polish trumpeter Tomasz Dąbrowski and Danish alto sax player Sven Dam Meinild, and features Danish double bass player Richard Andersson and drummer Peter Bruun. The quartet recorded the album at Tambourine studios in Malmö in August 2024. The cover photo is by Danish photographer Nicolai Howalt, «Old Tjikko #1», an image of one of the world’s oldest living trees.
Third Nature- Temporal Polyphony, as the previous installment of the trilogy, was inspired by the American anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton Press, 2015), an ethnographic account of the matsutake mushroom, a rare, prized, and expensive fungus, much appreciated in Japan. This trilogy is a dive into economic theory, effect pedals, programming, graphic scores, and spontaneous composition
Ocean Fanfare borrows Tsing’s ideas of «temporal polyphony», the coexistence of multiple timelines and possibilities for its music. Tsing wrote that «like virtual particles in a quantum field, multiple futures pop in and out of possibility; third nature emerges within such temporal polyphony». The quartet spins Tsing’s ideas into structurally open, improvisation-led seven compositions that favour ambiguity, overlap, intuitive decision-making, and collective improvisations that challenge the listener’s conception of linear time.
Ocean Fanfare has already established its emphatic dynamics and language. Third Nature encourages more degrees of freedom, a non-linear approach, and a spontaneous flow of the music that allows different temporal layers to emerge organically in performance. The subtle and often sparse yet deep conversations of Dąbrowski and Meinild are still at the center. Both Dąbrowski and Meinild are patiently exploring evocative, resonant melodies and the timbral possibilities of the alto sax and the trumpet, while Andersson and Bruun color this textual playing with delicate touches, creating a collaborative ecology of «temporal polyphony».
Eyal Hareuveni
Sven Dam Meinild (alto saxophone, electronics), Tomasz Dąbrowski (trumpet), Richard Andersson (double bass), Peter Bruun (drums)
