Concert with Trio iXi (Régis Huby, Guillaume Roy, Atsushi Sakaï), Edward Perraud and Jan Bang
Eivind Aarset + Jan Bang
Album review of Snow Catches on her Eyelashes
Aarset and Bang take dubbed-out ambience to new depths, with this subterranean-sounding LP. A unique melding of musique concrète and dub, with echoes of ambience and shoegaze.
There’s a lot to chew on here. Opening with ‘Purplebright’, it could be mistaken for the beginnings of an ambient album, with it’s lush looping and pastoral, sine drones. Things get weird quickly, with the beautifully contrasting ‘Before the Wedding’; piano lines are layered with noise, found sounds and increasingly dubbed fx. This theme of combined instrumentation, sampling/field recordings and dub processing techniques continues throughout the album, with tracks like ‘Outer Sphere’ venturing into almost pure musique concrète territory.
What makes this such a successful experience (in my mind), is it treads that precarious line between experimental/electro-acoustic “studio” music and “traditional” musicianship. Constantly layering Aarset’s unique and highly varied guitar textures, with Bang’s dubwise sound processing and sampling techniques, with seemingly no repetition or any leaning on en vogue audio tricks.
All this, combined with some clearly talented guest musicians, gives an album that works on multiple levels. As both a ‘functional’ ambient album (in the Eno sense of the word), or as a deep listening electroacoustic experience. Recommended.
- Luke Sanger, Flatland Frequencies
original link: Album review
LE SÉDUCTEUR OMNIPRÉSENT
Portrait sur le vif d’un magique bidouilleur de sons - Citizen Jazz magazine, France
C’est un séducteur, un séducteur aimable, tout à fait sûr de lui et déterminé, avec des bras ouverts, de grandes oreilles et un talent et une envie irrésistibles de transformer toutes sortes de sons, organisés ou non, en une expérience délicieuse, joyeuse et d’une qualité hallucinante.
Il jouit d’une grande confiance de la part de nombre de ses collègues musiciens et sait les amener à un endroit où ils n’auraient pas pu aller seuls. Il le fait en dansant avec les boutons et les curseurs d’une petite boîte, évoquant ainsi des sons et des particules sonores obscures qu’il laisse se fondre dans la grande « gestalt ».
Original article:
https://www.citizenjazz.com/Jan-Bang-le-seducteur-omnipresent.html
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(Photo: Henning Bolte)
Eivind Aarset & Jan Bang
ASPHALT LAKE
Jazzland has released a new single from the forthcoming album by Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang. Taken from the forthcoming album And Snow Catches on her Eyelashes - out on March 13.
The inimitable polyphonic textural layers of Eivind Aarset's guitar, the deep moods, ambient soundscaping, sonic sculpting and pulsing dub grooves of Jan Bang, and the distinctive harmonically rich voice of Nils Petter Molvær's trumpet come together on this evocative first single from Aarset & Bang's forthcoming album, "Snow Catches on her Eyelashes". The dense atmosphere throbs and chatters, conjuring visions of improbable vistas, an audio snapshot of a near-alien world. With new artwork and design by Punkt´s Nina Birkeland, "Snow Catches on her Eyelashes" will be released March 13th.
Dark Star Safari appears on Manafonistas Best of 2019 - releases by writer Uli Koch:
Kronos Quartet: Terry Riley – Sun Rings (simply a highlight!)
Theon Cross – Fyah
Chat Noir – Hyperuranion
Red Kite – Red Kite
Brandt Brauer Frick – Echo
The Comet is coming – Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery
Beatfarmer – On the Wind (exellent Ambient-Trance)
Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal & Jesse Paris Smith: Songs from the Bardo (far beyond every other album mentioned)
Yosi Horikawa – Spaces
Michele Rabbia/Gianluca Petrella/Eivind Aarset – Lost River
Lorenzo Feliciati/Michele Rabbia – Antikythera
Jan Bang/Erik Honore/Eivind Aarset/Samuel Rohrer – Dark Star Safari
Kronos Quartet/Mahsa & Marijan Vahdat – Placeless (Thanks to Brian!)
Thom Yorke – Anima
Francesco Guerri – Su Mimmi Non Si Spara
Julia Kent – Temporal
Erik Truffaz – Lune rouge
Lee “Scratch“ Perry – Rainford/Heavy Rain
Stephan Thelen – Fractal Guitar
Odd Okoddo – Auma
Emanuele Errante – This World (extraordinary ambient)
Caterina Barbieri – Ecstatic Computation
Ryan Teague – Recursive Iterations (modern classic – driving and amazing sounds)
Sonar w. David Torn – Tranceportation Vol 1
Penguin Café – Handfuls of Night
Brian Eno w. Daniel Lanois, Roger Eno – For All Mankind
No-man – Love You to Bits (endlich mal wieder Old School-Pop von übermorgen!)
Kali Malone – The Sacrificial Code
Lowly – Hifalutin
A Winged Victory for the Sullen – The Undivided Five
Anne Müller – Heliopause
Stale Storlokken – The Haze of Sleeplessness
Punkt best of 2019
Richard Williams´ best of 2019 list
Richard Williams (thebluemoment.com) has posted his best of 2019 list including two concerts from Punkt 2019: Kim Myhr at Kilden Teater og Konserthus and the Thurston Moore concert at KICK Nattklubb & Scene.
Also included on the best albums of 2019 is the box set of Arve Henriksen on rune grammofon consisting of four albums including "Towards Language, live at Punkt" and the new "Cryosphere" album produced by Punkt's own Jan Bang.
Arve Henriksen
The Timeless Nohwere
Rune Grammofon has released a box set of albums with new material including the newly Cryosphere produced by Jan Bang featuring drummers, Helge Norbakken, Ingar Zach and Audun Kleive in addition to two new and exiting musicians :Kristian Isachsen and Italian Walter Laureti (both programming). The basic material on the album was recorded live in Fredrikstad and reworked by Bang at his Punkt Studio in Kristiansand.
links: http://www.runegrammofon.com/artists/arve_henriksen/rlp3210-arve-henriksen-the-timeless-nowhere-4lp/
Reviews:
"Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen's latest project is a box gathering together old and new music, as well as a concert recording that was previously only available digitally. It's not a grab-bag compilation, though; it's all been carefully assembled into four discrete LPs (which fit onto two CDs), each one possessing its own distinct character. The first album Captured Under Mountainsides is primarily a solo effort, recorded in bits and pieces between 2015-19. Once in a while guests appear: Erik Honore contributes keyboards to one track, while Hilmar Jensson and Skuli Sverrisson play guitar and bass, respectively, on another. Longtime collaborator Jan Bang adds live sampling to two tracks, and on another, Henriksen's two sons are credited with additional percussion sounds. But with the exception of "Tun — Old Remains Of Settlement", which features Jensson and Sverrisson, it's difficult to spot the guests. The focus is always on Henriksen's gentle puffs of trumpet and soft washes of synth. The second LP Cryosphere is much more of a collective effort featuring a sizable group of musicians that includes three different percussionists (Helge Norbakken, lngar Zach and Audun Kleive), Jan Bang, Walter Laureti and Kristian Isachsen on keyboards and programming, and Eivind Aarset on guitar on one track. It's strongly rhythm driven music with a surprising darkness. The deep drones and ominous rattles of "Subsurface" could soundtrack a horror movie, and tracks like "Eating Stars" and "Myosis", with their soft bursts of static and sounds skittering from one side of the room to the other, are like Nils Petter Molvær ballads remixed by Main. Towards Language: Live At Punkt doesn't sound live. There's no room sound or feeling of musicians interacting, even though there are other musicians present (Bang, Honore and Aarset). On the title piece "Towards Language" Henriksen sings prelinguistic syllables and babbling phrases in a strange, high-pitched voice. Eventually on tracks like "Groundswell" and "Turf War" a sense of group language emerges; the latter is one of the noisiest, most conventionally Euro improv-style things Henriksen has ever done, battling with Bang's samples of himself as Aarset scrapes and jangles the strings. Ultimately, it's not a concert as much as a sustained mood. The final disc ,Acousmograph collects solo pieces from here and there. Henriksen plays trumpet, piano and celeste, and makes unidentifiable sounds, processing it all into a collection of evocative and sometimes discomfiting vignettes. Multifaceted yet still cohesive, this box is a must for Henriksen fans."
The Wire (UK)
Box set of otherworldly Scandinavian delights. Though he's Norwegian, there's a perceptible oriental quality to Henriksen's distinctive trumpet sound, which uncannily resembles a bamboo shakuhachi flute. For almost two decades, this 51-year-old Stranda-born musician has been seducing listeners with his quiet, melancholy soundscapes, and those partial to them will find much to savour on this new 2-CD/4-LP retrospective, which contains four complete albums of previously unreleased material. Inspired by the scenery of his homeland, the album Captured Under Mountainsides is breathtakingly beautiful. In contrast, Cryosphere, an improvised series of collaborations with producer Jan Bang, is more rhythmically dynamic. Towards Language - Live At Punkt shows that Henriksen can be just as compelling in concert, while the final studio album in the set, Acousmograph, is much more experimental in tone. Overall, this is a vivid portrait of a singular musician whose artistry defies categorisation. 4/5.
Mojo (UK)
With The Timeless Nowhere, Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, perhaps best known for his membership of Supersilent, tracks across a decade's recorded history, collecting four previously unreleased albums as a boxset. His immediately identifiable tone - wispy, breathy reediness, the trumpet reconfigured as a flute, a Shakuhachi, a mysterious mutant - is set in a number of configurations, Henriksen hymning landscapes, working with collaborator Jan Bang or performing live. The result is a vast expanse of ambient jazz movement. It can get a little too languorous and lost in itself, at times, but there are some lovely moments here, too.
Uncut (UK)
Unbroken
Concert review at Jazzdor, Strasbourg with Michele Rabbia, Eivind Aarset, Trio iXi and Jan Bang
Dark Star Safari
Concert review in Leipzig volkszeitung
Punkt 2019
The Wire review
Review in The Wire from this year Punkt festival.
Previous events
With Giorgos Varoutas, Anna Linardou, Arve Henriksen, Nikos Sidirokastritis, Harris Lambrakis
Battleship Potemkin Live Score
Jan Bang and Matt Calvert
Presented by EFG London Jazz Festival
The masterpiece of early cinema, Eisenstein’s 1925 Soviet classic, Battleship Potemkin finds its new sound with Opera North’s 2017 commission to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution and also to honour the wish of Eisenstein who hoped the score to be rewritten every 20 years to retain its relevance for each new generation. The film will be screened with Norwegian electronic musician and producer Jan Bang (Punkt) and Matt Calvert (Three Trapped Tigers) performing the score live with guitars, electronics and found sounds which are utterly fitting to the scenery, intensifying Eisenstein’s phenomenal imagery.
Arve Henriksen: Towards Language
Jan Bang Eivind Aarset Erik Honoré
My good friend and composer colleague Dai Fujikura is the artistic director of the Born Creative festival at the Metropolitan Theatre in Tokyo, Japan.
15th anniversary of the Punkt Festival in Kristiansand, Norway. goto: www.punktfestival.no
PUNKT 2019 is the 15th festival edition, connecting voices of memory with future sounds, and expanding the festival’s venues to include the Sørlandet Art Museum, the Kilden Performing Arts Centre and the city’s cathedral Domkirken, in addition to Kick Scene. A limited number of earlybird 3-day passes are available now, see below for details.
Thurston Moore comes to Punkt 2019 with the Thurston Moore Ensemble, the quartet will perform at Kick Scene on Friday 6 September. Thurston Moore will also take part in this year’s Punkt Seminar, curated by David Toop.
Bugge Wesseltoft's Scandinavian supergroup Rymden with former Esbjorn Svensson Trio rhythm section Dan Berglund (bass) and Magnus Öström (drums) will close the festival at the Kilden Performing Arts Centre.
Guitar innovator Steve Tibbetts performs in the cathedral with Marc Anderson, preceded by an organ concert by Ståle Storløkken and the vocal ensemble Trondheim Voices performing “Folklore”, composed by Helge Sten and Ståle Storløkken.
First encounters: Punkt 2019 presents Dai Fujikura's Shamisen Concerto (Orchestra version World Premiere) performed by Japanese shamisen virtuoso Hidejiro Honjoh and the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, and the debut concert by Dark Star Safari, a new band project by Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Eivind Aarset and Samuel Rohrer who release their debut album in May.
Since its founding in 1980, Frankfurt based Ensemble Modern has been among Europe’s leading New Music ensembles. On Punkt’s opening day, the ensemble will perform at the Sørlandet Art Museum, a concert that will also provide sonic material for the aforementioned performance by Dark Star Safari.
Also at the art museum: Under the moniker Azkadenya, string duo Vilde & Inga meets Sidsel Endresen. Azkadenya plays free improvised music with acoustic instruments, amplified to acheive a more rough and intense expression. Later in the festival, Sidsel Endresen & Jan Bang will perform a duo concert at Kilden.
Guitarist Kim Myhr plays at Kilden with his project You | me, featuring David Stackenäs, Håvard Volden, Adrian Myhr, Tony Buck, Ingar Zach and Hans Hulbækmo.
More concerts, Live Remixes and seminars will be announced later.
Outdoor evening concert together with Eivind Aarset and Anders Engen and Sven Persson on sound at the beautiful Castello Aragonese, Taranto in the Puglia region of southern Italy.
Vernissage Sonntag, 7. Juli 2019, im Anschluss an die Matinee «Phönix» des Boswiler Sommers, Apéro riche
Öffnungszeiten Montag, 8. Juli, bis Sonntag, 4. August 2019, 6.00 bis 23.00 Uhr, individuelle Besichtigung ohne Voranmeldung
Finissage Freitag, 2. August 2019, 19.30 Uhr, mit Apéro und Chorkonzert
Unmittelbar nach dem Boswiler Sommer verwandelt sich der Moränenhügel rund um die Alte Kirche Boswil in einen zauberhaften Musik- und Hörgarten. 32 Klangboxen, versteckt in den Bäumen und in der Gartenanlage, schaffen einen spielerischen, kontemplativen Raum, in dem man flanieren, lauschen und mit seiner Bewegung die Klangwelt verändern kann. Eine poetische musikalische Sommer-Intervention im Freiamt und am Freiämterweg – ein sinnliches akustisches Erlebnis für alle Altersgruppen, das einlädt, den historischen Kirchenbezirk rund um die Alte Kirche neu und ungewohnt wahrzunehmen.
«Pleasure Garden» ist initiiert von der australischen Komponistin und Blockflötenvirtuosin Genevieve Lacey. Musik und Umgebungsgeräusche lassen einen Hörgarten als interaktives Instrument entstehen. Ein ausgeklügeltes Audiodesign verwandelt den Garten in einen Ort von musikalischem Spiel, von Ruhe und Freude. Die Installation besteht aus 32 Lautsprechern und einem Surround-Klangsystem. Die Lautsprecher sind rund um Kirche, Kapelle und Pfarrhaus in den Bäumen und in der Gartenanlage des Künstlerhauses versteckt. Inspiriert von der Musik von Jacob van Eyck, dem holländischen Musiker, Komponisten, Improvisator und Edelmann des 17. Jahrhunderts, dessen «Der Fluyten Lust-hof» 1644 erschien, kombiniert die Klanginstallation Melodien von van Eyck mit Feldaufnahmen aus Australien, Holland und Norwegen sowie zeitgenössischer elektroakustischer Klangkunst von Genevieve Lacey und Jan Bang (Norwegen).
Musikalisch ist das Stück äusserst delikat und auf die Verhältnisse rund um das Künstlerhaus ausbalanciert. Die Komposition ist durchlässig genug, dass auch die Klänge des Ortes selbst präsent sind und es Luft für die Besucher gibt, um zu träumen, zu spielen und nachzudenken. Die technischen Installationen sind unsichtbar, sodass das Projekt einen zauberhaften Effekt hervorruft. Über Kameras reagiert der Garten auf Bewegungen der Besucher, die im jeweils nächsten Lautsprecher klanglich aufgenommen werden. In diesem Sinn bespielen und komponieren die Besucher selbst den Garten.
Jazz d'Or, Berlin
Since its creation in Paris in 1994, trio iXi (Régis Huby / Guillaume Roy / Atsushi Sakaï) has developed a particular link with a rhythmic musical language suggesting sound landscapes or paintings. The meeting with Michele Rabbia, Jan Bang and Eivind Aarset’s poetical and dreamlike universe came together earlier this summer for a three day workshop at Le Triton in Paris. The music developed at in Paris was rhythmically precise, constantly evolving, ever changing in structure/form creating delicate and disturbing textures with mutant combinations.
Six highly talented musicians and improvisers are together on stage, coming from very different and complementary musical universes. Norway, France, Italy and Japan : musical cultures and inventions hitting against one another to create an immaterial, timeless and strong music, widely open to space.
Régis HUBY – Violin (FR) Guillaume ROY – Violin (FR) Atsushi SAKAÏ – Cello (JAP) Jan BANG – Electronics (N) Michele RABBIA – Percussions & drums (IT) Eivind AARSET – Guitar (N)
ARVE HENRIKSEN "TOWARDS LANGUAGE" Tuesday May 28 USF Verftet Lyrical, world class trumpet from Norwegian jazz star ARVE HENRIKSEN trumpet JAN BANG live sampling ERIK HONORÉ live sampling EIVIND AARSET guitar The music of Arve Henriksen is marked by a unique sound. Lyrical, yet playful, Henriksen does not shy away from bringing his music in new directions - even in the middle of a concert. His sound is breathtakingly beautiful, and often subject to a test of the rules of jazz, whether he plays with a sax mouthpiece or with no mouthpiece at all. In addition to his own various projects and numerous collaborations, Arve Henriksen is a member of the legendary group Supersilent. This evening he brings with him guitar guru Eivind Aarset and the masters of electronics Bang and Honoré. Together these four make magic. A must see at this years festival.
Music and environmental sounds combine in the magnificent gardens of Felbrigg Hall to create a listening garden. Visitors are invited into the music and natural architecture, to play the garden, stroll or recline with friends and strangers.
Inspired by the story and music of Jacob van Eyck – the 17th century Dutch musician, composer, improviser and nobleman, Pleasure Garden combines excerpts from his work, set within new music by Genevieve Lacey (Australia) and Jan Bang (Norway).
UK PREMIERE FREE with Felbrigg Hall admission
Ensemble Modern / Jan Bang: With these hands
Haus der Dutsche Ensemble Akademie, Dachsaal, Frankfurt Am Main
Checkpoint concert with the Ensemble Modern.
In the workshop concerts of the series ›Checkpoint‹, Ensemble Modern explores the boundaries between contemporary music and experimental positions from other musical traditions. After encounters with electronic club music and Japan’s musical culture during the last episodes, on April 9, 2019 the Norwegian musician and producer Jan Bang will make a guest appearance at the Ensemble’s residence in Frankfurt’s Ostend. Through groundbreaking collaborations with artists such as the double bass player Arild Andersen, the trumpet player Arve Henriksen or the pianist Tigran Hamasyan, Jan Bang has established himself as one of the most fascinating live electronics artists in contemporary jazz. Subtle electronic overlayering of instrumental sounds, live sampling and especially pre-composed material enable glittering sound sculptures to arise, apparently suspended in space. Together with Erik Honoré, Jan Bang is also the founder and co-director of the festival ›Punkt‹, which takes place annually in Kristiansand and unites live electronics and jazz in many different formats – especially in live remix, in which sampled sounds from an instrumental concert are reconstituted during a subsequent electronic performance. One of these live remixes already brought Jan Bang together with Ensemble Modern in 2013 at the ›Frankfurter Positionen‹. For the next edition of ›Checkpoint‹, he joins Ensemble Modern members for the first time for joint improvisation.
Funded by the Deutsche Bank Stiftung.
Supported by Det Norske Komponistfond, Komponistenes Vederlagsfond, TONO.
Henriksen/Aarset/Bang/Honoré
Frankfurter Allgemeine review by Norbert Krampf
As part of the book fair in Frankfurt during the NORSK festival, Norbert Krampf of Frankfurter Allgemeine has written a review praising the quartet of Arve, Eivind, Erik and Bang saying:
"After all these years, it is not surprising how precisely the sound artists themselves are played together in a mostly freely improvised concert. For long stretches, their performance assumes the traits of a musical meditation that suggests sincerity, perhaps even spiritual depth, without exhibiting it in the foreground. The detailed game with nuances, shaded and softly lit tones, many familiar and some less-expected timbres offers at least long-time observers barely real surprises, but convinced by unmistakable personal statement. ".