Eivind Lønning | trumpet
Atle Nymo | tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
Michael Thieke | clarinet
Håvard Wiik | piano
Håkon Mjåset Johansen | drums
Ole Morten Vågan double | bass
1. My Head Is Listening 10:10
2. Beams, Dreams and Automobiles 04:40
3. Little Cage 05:51
4. Ich Bin Ein Belieber 07:23
5. Ballroom Glitch 03:36
6. The Guns Of Amarone, Episodes 1 & 2. 09:56
7. Lontano Sea 04:09
Recorded May 25th-26th, 2013 and March 26th- 27th, 2015 by Jean Boris Szymszak, P4 Studio, Berlin
Mixed by Ingar Hunskaar at Diktafon Studio, Oslo, Norway
Mastered by Luis Delgado
Produced by MOTIF
Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul
Design by Travassos
about:
When you have a band mainly formed by Scandinavian musicians, natural is to find that they played, or play, with the top names of Nordic jazz, people like Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Bugge Wesseltoft, Sidsel Endresen, Trygve Seim and Bobo Stenson. But the members of Motif have a relevance which surpasses geographic and musical boundaries, and other lists of collaborations appear, from the american icons Lee Konitz, Kenny Wheeler, Chick Corea, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman and Jason Moran to activists of experimental improvisation like Axel Dorner, Akira Sakata, Jim O´Rourke, Tobias Delius, Rudi Mahall and Tony Buck. This means the music isn’t local, but global, and crosses tendencies. In the case of this super-sextet the point of departure is a powerful and swinging hard bop, going through the most committed free jazz and entering in the fields of total improvisation. You’ll find aspects of all this in “My Head is Listening”: linear phrasings versus abstract textures, suggestive melodies versus acoustic noise and feet-agitating rhythms versus deconstructed pulsations, in disrespect of the divisions between mainstream and avant-garde. Nothing is forbidden, everything is possible.
links:
Listen on Bandcamp: My Head Is Listening
Label: clean feed
reviews:
All About Jazz
This Scandinavian band lives by its moniker. Indeed, most of these works are framed on a sequence of primary motifs, mini- motifs and sub-motifs, interspersed with knockdown, drag-out cadenzas that span free jazz, semi-free jazz, modern jazz and so on. At times this collective seems to thrive on nervous energy amid a surfeit of highs, lows and briskly executed reverse- engineering parameters. They go from one extreme to another, whether it’s dainty horns and piano etudes to moments of quietude or when the horns section lashes into a series of complex unison runs, dappled with brash outpourings.
The septet will periodically lull you into a low-key mood then treat you to a volcanic eruption with a conglomeration of knotty twists and turns, but on „Little Cage,“ pianist Håvard Wiik delves into minimalist territory. However, „Ballroom Glitch“ segues into a thorny horns groove, anchored by bassist Ole Morten Vågan’s elastic lines, supporting a linear romp that works its way from the top down. Here, Wiik surges into an extended solo spot with flailing arpeggios atop fervent undercurrents and bold horns statements as the band ventures into a fractured outlook via wily and assertive choruses.
The ensemble is not short on ideas yet stitches these motifs into cohesive musical statements topped off with an ever-present element of surprise. Moreover, „The Guns of Amarone, Episodes 1 & 2“ commences with slippery crescendos; a barrelhouse blues groove, and jaunty passages that intersect through various storylines, along with Håkon Mjåset Johansen’s sweeping solo and trumpeter Eivind Lønning’s twirling montages. Moving forward, they gel to a pulsating Latin vamp, augmented by the hornists‘ boisterous dialogues towards closeout. Hence, six active minds on a rampage migrate the jazz vernacular into an action-packed audio thriller.
-Glenn Astarita
FreejazzBlog
Scandinavian group Motif released their last record for Clean Feed, the wonderfully-titled Art Transplant, around five years ago; their newest release, My Head Is Listening, sees them expand from a quintet into a sextet, thanks to the addition of clarinetist Michael Thieke. As for the older players, there’s Ole Morten Vågan on double bass, Håkon Mjåset Johansen on drums, Håvard Wiik on piano, Atle Nymo on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, and Eivind Lønning on trumpet. Like their previous effort, My Head Is Listening strikes a fine balance between knotty, obtuse moments of improvisation, and more structured segments that display the group’s tight interplay and excellent melodic sensibilities. In short, there’s something for everyone!
The title track brings both of these elements together in a magnificent way, with Håvard Wiik’s jaunty piano lines suggesting a kind of art-damaged swing. The piece keeps the listener on his or her toes, swaying wildly between bursts of melodicism and dark, meditative stretches that are largely lacking in percussion – Atle Nymo tackles both of these with gusto, employing his tenor saxophone for the wilder moments and his bass clarinet for the more pensive sections. On the next piece, “Beams, Dreams, and Automobiles,” newest member Michael Thieke has his time to shine, with a frantic, forward-tumbling solo on the clarinet that belies the instrument’s rather staid reputation. Here too, Motif show just how well they can adjust and manipulate the intensity of the music – from the breakneck pace of the opening, to the roiling disquietude of later parts, this track reveals a group with a firm grip on the sonic pressure-valve.
Motif seem to be at their best when they take this chiaroscuro approach; at least one of the pieces, “Little Cage,” relies almost completely on skeletal, shapeless atmospherics – this track, while somewhat interesting, fails to capture the controlled chaos that the group excels in, and is too monochromatic for its own good. Thankfully, Motif never get stuck in that mire for too long: tracks like “Jazz Composition XKY53” are slow-moving without being slogs to get through, and “The Guns of Amarone, Episodes 1 & 2” is a ten-minute exercise in excitement, with drummer Håkon Mjåset Johansen and bassist Ole Morten Vågan pushing the piece ever-forward with restless, shape-shifting patterns that help ground the serpentine movements of the soloists. As with fellow Scandinavians Cortex, the best moments on My Head Is Listening are those during which the raw physicality of the rhythms meets the brain-melting abstractions that the reeds and brass conjure up.
My Head Is Listening is a great record, and one that fans of Cortex or Friends & Neighbors, or even similarly hard-driving free jazz like Ornette Coleman’s first quartet, would be wise to pick up.
-Derek Stone