Spacemusic Ensemble: IS OKAY OKAY IS CERTIFIED
Motvind Records
Scan the musician credits on Motvind Records' third release and you could get the impression it's a somewhat straightahead jazz recording featuring a singer, saxophonist, guitarist, pianist, drummer, and, in the bass role, a tuba player. Said impression couldn't be more wrong: Signe Emmeluth's Spacemusic Ensemble is as unconventional an outfit as they come, and the music presented on its oddly titled IS OKAY OKAY IS CERTIFIED as unusual. That listing of instruments is incomplete, by the way, and fleshing it out with the no-input mixers and synthesizers that also appear starts to provide a better picture.
Oh, sure, there are a few places where the recording gravitates in the direction of established jazz practice, and it certainly reflects a thoughtful integration between formal composition and improvisation. But I can't recall ever hearing anything quite like IS OKAY OKAY IS CERTIFIED before, and chances are the same might be true for you. It's not, incidentally, the first time Emmeluth's material has been reviewed in these pages, that modest distinction belonging to her 2018 release Polyp, a quartet outing credited to Emmeluth's Amoeba. On the Spacemusic Ensemble release, the Oslo-based alto saxophonist's also credited with no-input mixer, compositions, and texts and is joined by Rohey Taalah (vocals), Karl Bjorå (guitar, no-input mixer), Anja Lauvdal (piano, synth), Heida Karine Johannesdottir (tuba, effects), and Andreas Winther (drums, synth). Eight tracks are indexed with enigmatic titles, “A,” “1.1,” “C,” and the like.
Stylistically, the material inhabits an electro-acoustic space teeming with abstraction, exploration, and strange episodes alternating between free-floating instrumental passages and text-based parts featuring speaking and singing. Wordless vocal and alto sax melodies meander alongside high-pitched whirrs, piano flutter, and whooping synths, and it's not uncommon for wild pulsating sequences to be followed by serene spoken word segments. During the spoken word-focused “1.3,” the spatio-temporal distance separating Emmeluth's outfit from one backing a poet in a Greenwich Village jazz club a half-century ago begins to seem very small indeed.
As much as the material advances relaxedly, there are moments of animation, too. For example, the full ensemble works up some heat five minutes into the longest track, the eighteen-minute “B - 2+3,” with the music moving at a brisk gallop before shifting into a wild, free-form improv shortly thereafter, the leader squealing with abandon and the pianist generating turbulence across the keyboard. There's no shortage of Emmeluth's alto sax on offer either, the leader freely ranging between John Zorn-like skronk and softer expressions. This is a recording where occasional plunges into abrasive electronic noisemaking sit side-by-side with vocal passages both delicate and atonal.
Emmeluth's clearly got a thing for amoebas and other micro-organisms, said life-forms being all over the package and lyrics booklet. And however surreal and dada-like the texts are (“Bright night owl howling / Sent zest blooming yellow” representative of the style), they too reflect a sensibility engaged by quantum physics and cosmic matters. Though she's credited as the composer, IS OKAY OKAY IS CERTIFIED is very much an ensemble affair, the music critically influenced and determined by the musicians assembled for the project. It would be misguided, by the way, to take the band name literally: the space detail refers less to the expanse above us and more to the application of the concept to the ensemble's playing. If there's a weakness to the recording, it has to do with the familiar one of duration, the sixty-seven-minute running time rather longer than necessary to get the point across.June 2019