Expectations are potential disappointments. The higher
you fly in advance, the deeper you fall if you cannot get what you were looking
for. Yet, how can you tame your inner monsters if you hear about an album from
the collaboration of Bugge Wesseltoft, Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström. I could
not. A trio composed of top notch Scandinavian musicians with a lot of
historical milestones in their own careers... Add a subliminal Esbjörn Svensson
effect to your perceptions. How can you stop thinking about Esbjörn when you
listen to Dan and Magnus, while they are connecting this world’s rhythm to the
heaven’s riffs. I could not. It was very far away from being difficult to give up thinking about my all expectations when I started to listen to Rymden's first album.
Reflections & Odysseys is one of the most exciting albums I have listened
to in recent years. It was already clear from the first seconds of the intro-track Reflections that I am listening to something really new and fresh. The way how the mysterious feelings given by double-bass in
Reflection is connected to Odysseys’s clear phrases is verifying one of the most
important KPIs in a trio format: Organic sound. The Peacemaker is a double-bass
solo - a peaceful island - between Odyssey and electrical keys dominated
Pitter-Patter. With this electrical feeling merged with Scandinavian dignified wording,
I am swinging between Jazz Pa Svenska and Bitches Brew back and forth.
The
Luguburious Youth of Lucky Luke and The Celestial Dog and the Funeral Ship are
the melancholic centre points of the album, with all instruments are set to
their minimal contribution mode. The middle part of the “LYOLL” where the bass
leads the main theme in the best possible way, the following rise in the
tension triggered by piano and the incredible drum performance underneath
everything are all priceless. I felt speechless and could not help myself thinking
about old E.S.T. days. The backbone of “CDATP” is funeral drums. Dry and
arrogant... The bass softens it. With naive actions from the piano added on
top, the drum-set decides to leave this feeling for a while, for an incredible end
to the piece. Bergen is obviously from Norwegian part of the band. It is like
mountains in Bergen; lively, peaceful and cold... With its catchy main theme lead successfully by Bugge and improvisational parts, this piece looks like the locomotive piece of
the album. Rak-The Abyss carries very familiar patterns for the followers of
Magnus Öström. He connects his amazing solo -reminding the great stuff from
Leucocyte- to the introduction of Rak. Rak starts with some tense feelings with
a progressive rock influence and switches back and forth between this and a
more jazzy electrical texture. Orbiting sounds like the piano-riff introduction
of last piece Homegrown. That last bit is a very good final. It shows us once
more that the music we are exposed to are played by musicians, who are among
the bests on this planet. Homegrown flows very naturally and as the title
implies, the main theme carries very warm home-like feelings.
Overall, you can expect a lot from Reflections & Odysseys if you have not listened to it yet. We all can expect more from Rymden as one of the current best bands of Nordic Jazz.
