Wako
UROLIGE SINN
Photo: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard
Urolige sinn is Wako's third album.
Release: 31. august 2018
"Urolige sinn" – the new album from Wako – is equal parts atmosphere and energy. Smoky moods envelop runaway train rhythms, while the contemplative can seem like a mask for a chaos ready to erupt at any second. This is a series of dramaturgical tone poems, triple-distilled concepts, their purity and brevity carrying only the essential sounds – but you shouldn't take this as meaning "minimalism": here it means intense concentration, perfect focus. There is a build and release of tension, occasional hints of a threatened dissonance in the midst of melody, or glimpses of golden harmony emerging from chattering agitation. There are technicolour highways through chiaroscuro dreamscapes. There is what could easily be the incidental music for an urban hallucination of a heated conversation between Pharoah Sanders and Man Ray, or Erik Satie antagonized by Friedrich Nietzsche. Traces of joy mix with stains of sorrow, the everyday life intertwines with sinuous and wandering reveries. This is realism walking in expressionist shoes along a well-paved path.
That path was created by Wako, both as a collective and as individuals. Where similar groups would regard a "jazz composition" as merely a framework for an extended solo (or three), Wako operate as a unified musical consciousness, thinking, dreaming, reacting and planning together. While pianist Kjetil André Mulelid and saxophonist Martin Myhre Olsen each take individual composer credits on several tracks, the group coherence and synergy means that bassist Bárður Reinert Poulsen and drummer Simon Olderskog Albertsen are integral to the final delivery of the music. The Wako philosophy is one of "music first"; "Urolige sinn" is that philosophy made flesh.
Musicians:
Martin Myhre Olsen – saxophone
Kjetil André Mulelid – piano
Bárður Reinert Poulsen – double bass
Simon Olderskog Albertsen – drums
“These guys have no lack of ideas. It’s really inventive music performed by a very tight quartet. Their sound is very consistent and together. Superb!”
“Wako has produced something on Urolige Sinn that feels fresh, bold, and exciting”
“An entirely open-ended high-risk sort of improvised group playing”
“Well prepared and inspired spontaneous creativity”
“A bunch of magical moments.”
“It is a solid album, full of inspiring pieces, made of essential sounds, simple compositions and wide-ranging atmospheres”
“Twelve songs in a good half-hour is all this Norwegian quartet needs to get you completely captivated”
PRODUCTION // OF 135
Produced by WAKO
Recorded at Athletic Sound (Halden, NO) September 2017 by Dag Erik Johansen
Mixed and mastered by Karl Klaseie in Øra Mastering (Trondheim, NO)
Cover photo by Anders Beer Wilse (Skavlet føre, 1909)
Cover design by Christian Meaas Svendsen
All music by Wako, except:
2, 9 and 13 by Kjetil André Mulelid, and 6, 7 and 8 by Martin Myhre Olsen