| Gonimoblast — Live with Maja S.K. Ratkje & Arve Henriksen |
Gonimoblast — Live with Maja S.K. Ratkje & Arve Henriksen 
Birth name: Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje
MSKR Born: 29 December 1973, Trondheim, Sør~Trøndelag
AH Born: 22 March 1968, Stranda, Sunnmøre
Location: Birmingham, UK
Album release: June 30, 2017
Record Label: Stoney Lane Records
Duration: 66:15 + 57:31 => 123:46
Tracks:
Disc 1:
1. Part I 9:30
2. Part II 15:59
3. Part III 10:34
4. Part IV 8:41
5. Part V 9:22
6. Part VI 12:07
Disc 2:
1. Part I 10:21
2. Part II 5:21
3. Part III 4:43
4. Part IV 7:40
5. Part V 14:18
6. Part VI 15:08
Personnel/Credits:
•• Leafcutter John / electronics, light interface, music box, vocals;
•• Chris Mapp / bass and electronics;
•• Dan Nicholls / keys, synths;
•• Mark Sanders / drums, cymbals, percussion;
with
•• Maja S.K Ratkje / voice, electronics, oscillator and things (disc 1)
•• Arve Henriksen / trumpet, pocket trumpet, vocals, electronics (disc 2)
•• #SLR1966 — Stoney Lane Records
•• Recorded live at The Crossing, South and City College, Birmingham — 26th and 27th November 2015.
•• Engineered by Nils Edstrom.
•• Mixed by Chris Mapp.
•• Mastered by Peter Beckmann at Technologyworks.
•• Produced by Chris Mapp and Alex Bonney.
•• Artwork — Tom Tebby.
Review
•• Samplers have been around since the ‘60s, so why do they still seem so futuristic? It seems to have taken forever for electronics to gain a foothold in jazz, but maybe their time has finally come. Composer and bass player Chris Mapp started Gonimoblast in 2013 with pianist Dan Nicholls, electronics wizard Leafcutter John, and percussionist Mark Sanders, to explore improvisation with electronics.
•• …Live was recorded over two nights in November 2015 at The Crossing, an expansive black box theatre among the evocative dereliction of warehouses and canals in the former industrial district of Digbeth, Birmingham. The group’s activity earlier in the year has been represented on three online releases, Always Darkest Before Dawnn (with trumpeter Sam Wooster), The Depths, and Flatland (with Shabaka Hutchings). This is the first Gonimoblast recording to be released by the Stoney Lane label, in a lavish, limited edition screen~printed by artist Tom Tebby.
•• This double live album is a plateau from which to view the group’s dizzying progress. There’s a symphonic sense of overall form that develops and emerges from the group’s strong discipline and cultivation of intensity over the discs’ slowly burning two hours. Each disc is centred around a guest. The first is Norwegian vocalist Maja S.K. Ratkje, performing with discreet microphones and several layers of processing.
•• The group opens with quiet abstraction: pointillist daubs of percussion and sound in a discrete integrated sound world. There is a deliberate blurring of electronic and acoustic elements. A sound you might ascribe to the kit might come from Leafcutter John, and vice versa. With the whole group apart from Sanders using electronics there is an enjoyable uncertainty in not being sure who is doing what, what is improvised, what is live, what is created in the box and what has been fed back and reprocessed. It takes a couple of listens to separate out the threads and even then you’re never completely sure.
•• As the interactions develop, more typically “musical” and tonal elements are introduced, with electronic whistling, mechanical drones and intense playing from Sanders and Mapp. Material gathers and loops in thorny clumps of texture, thickening and driving forward with darker intent. Maja Ratkje’s vocals become a larger presence; speech particles patter through delay pedals, half~thoughts are churned into glossolalia; and only in the first hour’s climactic finale is there conventional singing, in a beautiful clear Scandinavian voice. You can picture the players silhouetted against columns of light, which they were on the night. Hurricanes and helicopters crescendo, synths sweep incandescently across the sharp horizon of a white sky with an inscrutable universal emotionality reminiscent of Sigur Rós.
•• The second disc features trumpet player and vocalist Arve Henriksen. It launches almost in medias res into an unsettling sound world of throaty vocal phrases underpinned by clattery arrhythmias. It has more of the doomy sense of Chris Mapp’s work prior to Gonimoblast and to be found in the heavier moments of Fram from the second album The Depths. Even with electronic manipulation Henriksen’s trumpet is inescapably tonal but the more conventionally musical sense of the second hour complements the first’s sonic abstraction — though any provisional key centre keeps shifting, approximating a modernistic atonality between moments of suggestive tonality: the sort of thing scholars argue about with regard to harmony and modality in Debussy and Stravinsky. Compared to the sensational but more obviously free jazz impetus such as we heard in their intense work with Shabaka Hutchings mere months before, Live is an impressive and satisfying integration of supposed opposites: tonal and textural, sonic and musical, electronic and acoustic, composition and improvisation. It’s slow burning 21st~century music for a time of ceaseless noise. — londonjazznews.com
•• http://www.londonjazznews.com/
Also:
John Fordham, Thu 31 Aug ‘17 19.20 BST:. Score: ***
•• https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/31/gonimoblast-live-with-maja-sk-ratkje-and-arve-henriksen-cd-review
Label: http://emporium.stoneylane.net/
Website: http://ratkje.no/
Website: http://www.arvehenriksen.com/
Bandcamp: https://gonimoblast.bandcamp.com/
PRESS:
•• “Highly original and strongly impressive ...” — Jazzwise ****
•• “Both sets are object lessons of how to listen to other musicians while improvising.” — The Wire
•• “an impressive and satisfying integration of supposed opposites: tonal and textural, sonic and musical, electronic and acoustic, composition and improvisation.” — London Jazz News
•• “an excellent summation of Gonimoblast’s year of intensive woodshedding ... definitely worth an investment.” — Dalston Sound
Credits:
•• * Bassist/Composer Chris Mapp to release special live Gonimoblast recordings featuring Arve Henriksen and Maja S. K. Ratkje *
•• Limited Edition double album ‘Gonimoblast Live’ releases June 30th on Stoney Lane Records
•• Gonimoblast, the ever~inventive sonic, electronic and jazz~inspired improvisers, led by dynamic bassist and composer Chris Mapp, are to release a double live album featuring striking guest performances from leading Norwegian vocalist Maja S. K. Ratkje and renowned trumpeter Arve Henriksen.
•• Made up by four of the UK’s most noteworthy musical experimenters, Mapp formed Gonimoblast with the simple design of working with friends and great musicians to explore improvisation with electronics. Gonimoblast Live — recorded on two consecutive nights in Birmingham in November 2015 — is the culmination of several years of the band performing together, where it is almost impossible to hear where one musician’s sound ends and another begins, creating a sonic patchwork of depth, intrigue, noise and beauty.
•• Joining Mapp, drummer Mark Sanders, keys player Dan Nicholls and electronic wizard Leafcutter John, Disc One features special guest Maja SK Ratkje. Having seen her solo performance at Punkt Festival in 2013, Chris was inspired to find a way to work with her, with Gonimoblast Live being their debut performance together. Maja’s beautiful voice, open approach and use of electronic processing guides the music from oscillator explorations to a joyous, apocalyptic finale.
•• The second disc brings the quartet together with leading experimental light, trumpeter and vocalist Arve Henriksen. One of the most recognisable names from Norway’s improvised music scene, Arve was a natural choice to guest with Gonimoblast — his acclaimed ensemble Supersilent helping to inspire and shape the genesis of the band.
•• Limited to just 408 double CD albums, Gonimoblast Live features original artwork by artist Tom Tebby, with each unique individual album screen~printed, hand painted by the artist and assembled by hand. It is the eighth release from Birmingham~based Stoney Lane Records.
•• * The project was created through the Birmingham Town Hall and Symphony Hall Jazzlines Fellowships programme 2014/15, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
Notes:
•• A gonimoblast is a type of cell produced by red algae upon the fertilization of a zygotic nucleus, and involved in the formation of carpospores. The cells subsequently divide and ultimately serve as storage or generative cells. Storage cells contain starch and are multinucleate; whereas generative cells are situated further from the auxiliary cell, are uninucleate, and form the terminal lobes in the ensuing carpospores. Gonimoblasts are connected by septal pores, usually blocked by septal plugs.
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| Gonimoblast — Live with Maja S.K. Ratkje & Arve Henriksen |
MSKR Born: 29 December 1973, Trondheim, Sør~Trøndelag
AH Born: 22 March 1968, Stranda, Sunnmøre
Location: Birmingham, UK
Album release: June 30, 2017
Record Label: Stoney Lane Records
Duration: 66:15 + 57:31 => 123:46
Tracks:
Disc 1:
1. Part I 9:30
2. Part II 15:59
3. Part III 10:34
4. Part IV 8:41
5. Part V 9:22
6. Part VI 12:07
Disc 2:
1. Part I 10:21
2. Part II 5:21
3. Part III 4:43
4. Part IV 7:40
5. Part V 14:18
6. Part VI 15:08
Personnel/Credits:
•• Leafcutter John / electronics, light interface, music box, vocals;
•• Chris Mapp / bass and electronics;
•• Dan Nicholls / keys, synths;
•• Mark Sanders / drums, cymbals, percussion;
with
•• Maja S.K Ratkje / voice, electronics, oscillator and things (disc 1)
•• Arve Henriksen / trumpet, pocket trumpet, vocals, electronics (disc 2)
•• #SLR1966 — Stoney Lane Records
•• Recorded live at The Crossing, South and City College, Birmingham — 26th and 27th November 2015.
•• Engineered by Nils Edstrom.
•• Mixed by Chris Mapp.
•• Mastered by Peter Beckmann at Technologyworks.
•• Produced by Chris Mapp and Alex Bonney.
•• Artwork — Tom Tebby.
Review
•• Samplers have been around since the ‘60s, so why do they still seem so futuristic? It seems to have taken forever for electronics to gain a foothold in jazz, but maybe their time has finally come. Composer and bass player Chris Mapp started Gonimoblast in 2013 with pianist Dan Nicholls, electronics wizard Leafcutter John, and percussionist Mark Sanders, to explore improvisation with electronics.
•• …Live was recorded over two nights in November 2015 at The Crossing, an expansive black box theatre among the evocative dereliction of warehouses and canals in the former industrial district of Digbeth, Birmingham. The group’s activity earlier in the year has been represented on three online releases, Always Darkest Before Dawnn (with trumpeter Sam Wooster), The Depths, and Flatland (with Shabaka Hutchings). This is the first Gonimoblast recording to be released by the Stoney Lane label, in a lavish, limited edition screen~printed by artist Tom Tebby.
•• This double live album is a plateau from which to view the group’s dizzying progress. There’s a symphonic sense of overall form that develops and emerges from the group’s strong discipline and cultivation of intensity over the discs’ slowly burning two hours. Each disc is centred around a guest. The first is Norwegian vocalist Maja S.K. Ratkje, performing with discreet microphones and several layers of processing.
•• The group opens with quiet abstraction: pointillist daubs of percussion and sound in a discrete integrated sound world. There is a deliberate blurring of electronic and acoustic elements. A sound you might ascribe to the kit might come from Leafcutter John, and vice versa. With the whole group apart from Sanders using electronics there is an enjoyable uncertainty in not being sure who is doing what, what is improvised, what is live, what is created in the box and what has been fed back and reprocessed. It takes a couple of listens to separate out the threads and even then you’re never completely sure.
•• As the interactions develop, more typically “musical” and tonal elements are introduced, with electronic whistling, mechanical drones and intense playing from Sanders and Mapp. Material gathers and loops in thorny clumps of texture, thickening and driving forward with darker intent. Maja Ratkje’s vocals become a larger presence; speech particles patter through delay pedals, half~thoughts are churned into glossolalia; and only in the first hour’s climactic finale is there conventional singing, in a beautiful clear Scandinavian voice. You can picture the players silhouetted against columns of light, which they were on the night. Hurricanes and helicopters crescendo, synths sweep incandescently across the sharp horizon of a white sky with an inscrutable universal emotionality reminiscent of Sigur Rós.
•• The second disc features trumpet player and vocalist Arve Henriksen. It launches almost in medias res into an unsettling sound world of throaty vocal phrases underpinned by clattery arrhythmias. It has more of the doomy sense of Chris Mapp’s work prior to Gonimoblast and to be found in the heavier moments of Fram from the second album The Depths. Even with electronic manipulation Henriksen’s trumpet is inescapably tonal but the more conventionally musical sense of the second hour complements the first’s sonic abstraction — though any provisional key centre keeps shifting, approximating a modernistic atonality between moments of suggestive tonality: the sort of thing scholars argue about with regard to harmony and modality in Debussy and Stravinsky. Compared to the sensational but more obviously free jazz impetus such as we heard in their intense work with Shabaka Hutchings mere months before, Live is an impressive and satisfying integration of supposed opposites: tonal and textural, sonic and musical, electronic and acoustic, composition and improvisation. It’s slow burning 21st~century music for a time of ceaseless noise. — londonjazznews.com
•• http://www.londonjazznews.com/
Also:
John Fordham, Thu 31 Aug ‘17 19.20 BST:. Score: ***
•• https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/31/gonimoblast-live-with-maja-sk-ratkje-and-arve-henriksen-cd-review
Label: http://emporium.stoneylane.net/
Website: http://ratkje.no/
Website: http://www.arvehenriksen.com/
Bandcamp: https://gonimoblast.bandcamp.com/
PRESS:
•• “Highly original and strongly impressive ...” — Jazzwise ****
•• “Both sets are object lessons of how to listen to other musicians while improvising.” — The Wire
•• “an impressive and satisfying integration of supposed opposites: tonal and textural, sonic and musical, electronic and acoustic, composition and improvisation.” — London Jazz News
•• “an excellent summation of Gonimoblast’s year of intensive woodshedding ... definitely worth an investment.” — Dalston Sound
Credits:
•• * Bassist/Composer Chris Mapp to release special live Gonimoblast recordings featuring Arve Henriksen and Maja S. K. Ratkje *
•• Limited Edition double album ‘Gonimoblast Live’ releases June 30th on Stoney Lane Records
•• Gonimoblast, the ever~inventive sonic, electronic and jazz~inspired improvisers, led by dynamic bassist and composer Chris Mapp, are to release a double live album featuring striking guest performances from leading Norwegian vocalist Maja S. K. Ratkje and renowned trumpeter Arve Henriksen.
•• Made up by four of the UK’s most noteworthy musical experimenters, Mapp formed Gonimoblast with the simple design of working with friends and great musicians to explore improvisation with electronics. Gonimoblast Live — recorded on two consecutive nights in Birmingham in November 2015 — is the culmination of several years of the band performing together, where it is almost impossible to hear where one musician’s sound ends and another begins, creating a sonic patchwork of depth, intrigue, noise and beauty.
•• Joining Mapp, drummer Mark Sanders, keys player Dan Nicholls and electronic wizard Leafcutter John, Disc One features special guest Maja SK Ratkje. Having seen her solo performance at Punkt Festival in 2013, Chris was inspired to find a way to work with her, with Gonimoblast Live being their debut performance together. Maja’s beautiful voice, open approach and use of electronic processing guides the music from oscillator explorations to a joyous, apocalyptic finale.
•• The second disc brings the quartet together with leading experimental light, trumpeter and vocalist Arve Henriksen. One of the most recognisable names from Norway’s improvised music scene, Arve was a natural choice to guest with Gonimoblast — his acclaimed ensemble Supersilent helping to inspire and shape the genesis of the band.
•• Limited to just 408 double CD albums, Gonimoblast Live features original artwork by artist Tom Tebby, with each unique individual album screen~printed, hand painted by the artist and assembled by hand. It is the eighth release from Birmingham~based Stoney Lane Records.
•• * The project was created through the Birmingham Town Hall and Symphony Hall Jazzlines Fellowships programme 2014/15, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
Notes:
•• A gonimoblast is a type of cell produced by red algae upon the fertilization of a zygotic nucleus, and involved in the formation of carpospores. The cells subsequently divide and ultimately serve as storage or generative cells. Storage cells contain starch and are multinucleate; whereas generative cells are situated further from the auxiliary cell, are uninucleate, and form the terminal lobes in the ensuing carpospores. Gonimoblasts are connected by septal pores, usually blocked by septal plugs.
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