Soon Means Now is the sophomore album of the Norwegian experimental, free improvising trio ükya – trombonist Emil Bø (of the Not Normal septet and a trio with Paal Nilssen-Love and bassist Kertu Aer), guitarist Kristian Enkerud Lien (who leads the KRISE quartet with Bø), and drummer Michael Lee Sørenmo, following We Come for an Experience of Presence (Nakama, 2024). The album was recorded at bassist Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard’s Flerbruket studio in January 2025.
The album offers fifteen short free-form and tension-filled pieces that continue to explore the relations between free improvisation (especially the British school of free improvisation), exploratory sound art, European art music, minimalism, just intonation, contemporary music, and even Korean traditional music (with Sørenmo’s Korean drums and other percussive instruments). Bø, Lien, and Sørenmo investigate and experiment with the timbral spectrums and complementary resonant possibilities of their instruments using an array of extended breathing, bowing, plucking, and percussive techniques and deep listening dynamics.
Bø, Lien, and Sørenmo may still be young musicians, but their approach is mature and fearless, often cerebral and eccentric, and sometimes even punkish, and clearly anti-virtuosic. Soon Means Now defines ükya’s uncompromising and expressive idiosyncratic language that keeps experimenting with sound and structure, and the conceptual and the immediate.
Eyal Hareuveni
Emil Bø (trombone), Kristian Enkerud Lien (guitar), Michael Lee Sørenmo (drums)
