Mats Gustafsson & Andreas Røysum — Vindögæ
Norwegian musicians Mats Gustafsson (saxophone) and Andreas Røysum (clarinet) have joined forces for this freeform improvisational recording, Vindögæ. While I'm hitherto unfamiliar with Røysum, Gustaffson ranks among my favorite modern jazz players, someone truly capable of elevating the free jazz form into something consistently expressive and interesting, with his semi-melodic, heavily textural and harmonic-laden performances. The album is a typical LP length of forty minutes, split into sides A and B.
Neither player sees any reason to hold back, it would seem, engaging in a chaotic and cacophanous intertwining with unpredictable breaks and resurgences of density. Diving restlessly into rapid chromatic scalar figures and beating dissonant harmonic intervals, the two players seem to accentuate each other's aggressiveness. On some occasions, the two simply hold two contrasted or detuned pitches, and let the discordance drill into the listener's ears.
Where many of Gustaffson's solo performance seem to focus on the physical nature of the saxophone's metallic resonance and its overtones, this recording lands somewhere closer to 20th century serialist classical music like Schoenberg and Boulez, with its percolations and scattered blips of disconnected tonality. Of course, there are a still good many of Gustaffson's signature saxophone growls, but in general, this recording seems to live primarily in shrill higher octaves. Though saxophone and clarinet are the only credited instruments on the recording, there is undoubtedly a flute or piccolo as well, in certain passages, which contributes to the overall shrillness. At other moments, it sounds as if both are playing the saxophone at once.
Perhaps my favorite moment comes toward the end of the 2nd side, with a percussive usage of the saxophone involving slapping the outside, and in a couple cases yelling into it. At one point, Gustaffson lets loose an absolutely beastly two-tone growl with a dense overtone series not unlike Tuvan throat singing.
Fan of Mats Gustafsson as I am, I found this to be one of his more difficult works to listen to. The bluesy warmth underpinning many of his performances is significantly disrupted by the chaotic high register chromaticism from Røysum. Though the two players will often see fit to randomly change direction, meaning the overall performance is not too redundant, it feels more difficult than usual to parse the musicians' internal logic behind the playing, and its difficult to say much about any kind of longer energetic arcs drawn. The album is more of a series of whimsical moments than anything with a beginning, middle and end. For more info