Nils Petter Molvaer’s Khmer (Live in Bergen), revisited

Nils Petter Molvaer Khmer (lives in Bergen)

The material revisited on this live album was a mini-tornado that took the music world by storm in 1997. Who knew you could use loops, beats, and samples and still make something called jazz? Effect Khmer It was and continues to be tremendous. Walk by the Opera Bar at the Sydney Opera House and you’ll likely hear a show that owes a debt to Norway’s Nils Petter Molvaer.

Khmer It had tentacles in trip-hop, drum and bass, ambient, ethno-groove and electronic dance music, but it was none of these. He was a trumpeter who created interesting contexts in which he and his friends could improvise. This suited people who liked a side order of drugs with their music.

This is not the first live version Khmerwith a high-quality bootleg that emerged nearly two decades ago, but it’s more interesting because as time went on not only did the personnel evolve, but those who kept the course (Molvaer, guitarist Eivind Aarset and drummer/percussionist Rune Arnesen) also grew as artists. Molvaer added several new compositions and changed the order of work, and of course electronic technology leapt forward.

For those unfamiliar with the original album, this is Nordic noir, where danger lurks in every shadow. Contrast and surprise are Molvaer’s primary tools, rather than complexity. The music can be as soft as a light dusting of snow, its trumpet screaming a song of loneliness, frozen by the slightest whispers of electronics. Then a backbeat rhythm kicks in, perhaps teasingly gentle at first, before building into a powerful thump that will wake your neighbors’ neighbors. Aarset’s guitar features are magnificent monoliths of sound that rise from the speakers and threaten to crush you.

Unlike the original album, there is now a specialist bassist in Audun Erlien and a second drummer in Per Lindvall; the lineup is rounded out by live sampling by Jan Bang and DJ Pal “Strange Fruit” Nyhus, who also handles the programming.

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Among the new tracks BrutalityIt’s built on a thick bass ostinato around which drums dance, while others create layers of sound. This layering is another characteristic of the music as a whole and is a tribute to the band’s discipline and expert mixing; This way, very soft sounds can be heard “through” louder sounds. Sometimes, when the music is at its highest, the drama coalesces into energy squared, but with the wonderful sense that the actors never let themselves completely off the leash. They are Norwegians after all.

While rock bands routinely revisit old albums as festival acts, this is rare in jazz. Fortunately, this has become not an act of nostalgia, but an act of making music in the present in every sense. And if you turn it up, the sound will make you think you just upgraded your system.

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