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Album Reviews

Norse progressive jazz guitarist Eivind Aarset's Electronique Noire set a new standard for fusion music. For starters, it's because his sound -- while fully electronic -- had all the feel of an organic ensemble playing in the heat of the moment. Like the Miles Davis bands of the early '70s, this was music as invention and articulation, not merely concept and flash. On Light Extracts, his sophomore effort, Aarset furthers himself and his Electronique Noire band's mission by creating a body of composition that delves further into the electro underground as a way of capturing the flash of the "new" at the heart of jazz. Here, Aarset's guitar creeps along moodily, articulating itself inside a swirl of noise, ambience, subtly shifting harmonics, and barely nuanced rhythms. Sound is the effect, both desired and realized, and the nu-jazz underground is probably less ready for it than most American jazz audiences. Take the shimmering Afro-delic, subatomic funk at the center of "Dust Kittens," articulated with a standup bass and a host of walled-off tonal statements made by the guitarist. Here harmony becomes rhythm, which becomes the ground for harmonics to shimmer and shake and ultimately become some seamless warm ooze for new rhythmic ideas to take hold. "Wolf Extract" is a roiling series of spare yet heavily layered vocal samples pushed through the staccato bass runs that engage the guitar on the level of a dominant minor chord and then fragment around a creaking, fractured jungle rhythmic figure. When Hans Ulrik's bass clarinet enters the fray, there are atmospheres falling in and out of the mix at an alarming rate, yet they never fluctuate -- they are either in or out. Likewise, the Hendrixian chord pattern that commences the maelstrom of "The String Thing" is pure pulse and energy as it undulates through phrase, sequence, and segment. Basses rattle in the underpinned rhythmic center as Aarset's guitar plies a textural schema trying to get to and undo the fixed center of the track. He loose-hands his way around the fretboard, playing against the rhythm and on top of it until everything gives way to some new form of musically crystalline darkness. Light Extracts is light years ahead of everybody in this game and a few notches above his first effort. This is the cat to watch. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide