Articles
Chantal Acda
The Balustrade Ensemble
Ten Favourite Labels 2015

Albums
Chantal Acda
Akisai
Asamisimasa
At
The Balustrade Ensemble
Basic Soul Unit
Bersarin Quartett
Bing & Ruth
Wil Bolton
Ian William Craig
Cryo Chamber Collab.
Dikeman Noble Serries
Paul Ellis
Ensemble Economique
Reiko Füting
Jim Ghedi
Hakobune & Dirk Serries
Mary Halvorson
Chihei Hatakeyama
Iskra String Quartet
Mano Le Tough
Deborah Martin
Lubomyr Melnyk
Multicast Dynamics
James Murray
Mute Forest
New Order
OKADA
Ø [Phase]
Perils
Pole
port-royal
Post Office
Rayons
Nadia Reid
Max Richter
Will Samson
Time Is a Mountain
Michael Trommer
Tuxedo. / Cult W. No Name
Understated Theory
Zero T

Compilations / Mixes / Remixes / Reissues
Sylvain Chauveau
John Foxx & Harold Budd
Mathew Jonson
Le Freak

EPs / Cassettes / DVDs / Mini-Albums / Singles
Mr. Bios
Oneirogen
Seba
Zero T / LSB / T. Prose / FD

Asamisimasa Plays the Music of Øyvind Torvund: Neon Forest Space
Aurora

Øyvind Torvund's idiosyncratic vision is well-served by his collaborators on this collection of four works by the Norwegian composer (b.1976). The first one of note is obviously Asamisimasa, a five-member ensemble founded in 2002 whose avant-garde sensibility clearly aligns with Torvund's and who bring his eclectic material to life with assiduity and verve; the second is artist Marc Bell, whose colourful illustrations translate the wildness of Torvund's music into visual form on the release's packaging. Unusual juxtapositions abound in the four illustrations in a way that mirrors the composer's own freewheeling musical conceptions.

Asamisimasa, whose 2012 debut album Pretty Sound highlighted the music of Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen, consists of keyboardist Ellen Ugelvik, clarinetist Kristine Tjøgersen, cellist Tanja Orning, percussionist Håkon Stene, and guitarist Anders Førisdal. On paper the line-up appears straightforward enough, yet the group's approach, characterized as a collision of traditional and left-field playing, is unusual. Conventional instruments commonly rub shoulders with junkyard sounds and field recordings, with Stene adding everything from an electric drill and toy laser gun to the group's clarinet-guitar-piano-cello mix. Like Torvund, Asamisimasa is comfortable threading folk, industrial, experimental, and chamber music into its ever-mutating soundworld. Joining the quintet on the recording are trombonist Torild G. Berg, violinist Karin Hellqvist, and, fittingly, Torvund himself, who adds noise generator, feedback, and cassette recorders to three of the four pieces.

During the five-part Wilibald Motor Landscape, guitars, harpsichord, clarinet, and cello collide with vehicles roaring down motorways, the staccato rush of tape and instrument sounds moving so fast the piece begins to resemble a collage of fragments. One section is marked by the contrast between the slow wheeze of the instruments and the Doppler-esque sounds of cars racing by; elsewhere, Tjøgersen and Orning contribute clarinet and cello solos, the natural timbre of their instruments offset by barrages of noise clattering around them. As raw and adventurous is the seven-part Neon Forest Space, wherein Asamisimasa plays along with the sounds of nature and attempts to replicate it in its own playing. With bird chirps and animal noises quietly filling the air, the ensemble's instrument sounds creak and woozily moan as if in response to the creatures' invitation. In the eighteen-minute Plastic Waves, the juxtaposition is between the natural and the industrial worlds, things created by nature versus by human hands; alternating between noise splashes and restrained moments, the piece puts Ugelvik's piano at the forefront, but there's space made for Førisdal's Hendrix-ian guitar, too.

November 2015