Feb 1 2020
Best of 2019 #13: Minua – “Still Light”
Back in February when I originally recommended Still Light, I said it was waaaaaaay too soon to be making proclamations like This is the most beautiful thing I’ve heard all year. Except, I was right. It was and it is. And now that a year has passed since I first opened my ears to this lovely recording, a year spent listening to this album over and over and over again, I’m now even more assured in my assessment that the Minua trio’s Still Light is one of the most gorgeous things I’ve heard this year, maybe the most gorgeous, and I expect my opinion will be shared by many others. The trio of bass clarinetist Fabian Willmann and guitarists Luca Aaron and Kristinn Kristinsson treat the influences of Scandinavian folk, ambient minimalism, Nordic jazz, and a dash of post-rock melodicism as if merely fluctuations of shadows dancing between the rays of sunrise. And this is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year.
Your album personnel: Fabian Willmann (bass clarinet), Kristinn Kristinsson (guitar) and Luca Aaron (guitar).
Released on Traumton Records.
Music from Nantes, France.
I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.
There’s a relentlessness to this music that is nothing less than thrilling. But more than that, it’s got heart. It’s evident in every note, and it bleeds on through no matter how volatile the music may get, and that’s why the unerring melodicism of this music is the quality that eclipses all others. 
Summing up the music of Max Andrzejewski 
Writing about the 2019 release by
Feb 12 2020
Best of 2019 #12: Erlend Apneseth Trio with Frode Haltli – “Salika, Molika”
That past-future timelessness, and how it’s couched within a foundation of folk musics, it reminds me of other brilliant and adored recordings, like Down Deep from the trio of Ernst Reijseger, Harmen Fraanje, and Mola Sylla, and, similarly, Codona 3 by another trio, of Don Cherry, Collin Walcott, and Naná Vasconcelos. All of these recordings had a way with their melodies, where they could come head on or an indirect route and nail their target, and they each conducted an inspired rhythmic discourse, the kind where its just as likely to compel the foot to tap as trigger the brain to try to interpret what it all means. They each utilized unconventional instrumentation, and yet made it sound like something common to everyday life, as if crickets bathed in moonlight or the electric hum of the city at daybreak. These are old soul recordings. They transcend the bookends of our own personal timelines and make us feel as a part of something more eternal, entering a special place where art becomes immortality, and everyone it touches.
The musicians tapped into that source for this session, and it’s magical.
Your album personnel: Erlend Apneseth (hardanger fiddle), Stephan Meidell (baritone acoustic guitar, zither, live sampling and electronics), Øyvind Hegg-Lunde (drums, percussion) and Frode Haltli (accordion).
Released on Hubro Music.
Music from Aal, Buskerud, Norway.
Listen | Read more | Available at: Bandcamp – Amazon
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By davesumner • Recap: Best of 2019 • 0 • Tags: Aal Buskerud (Norway), Best Jazz of 2019, Erlend Apneseth, Frode Haltli, Hubro Music