Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Enfant Terrible (2014) Lossless

Double-tracked with a ghostly haze of background fuzz, Hedvig's lightning-rod guitar blazes a trail that comes in the wake of the heaviest guitar giants there's Hendrix, Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Led Zep's Jimmy Page swirling around the cauldron, but also the exploratory, disciplined freeplay of Pete Cosey, John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana buzzing out of her fingertips. Born in the Norwegian town of Ålesund in the early 80s, Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen has been steeped in the guitar since fooling around with her mother's nylon-strung acoustic at the age of ten. She dug deep into her dad's jazz and rock LP shelves and translated a biography of Jimi Hendrix for a school project. Then she was given an electric guitar and amplifier as a confirmation present, and never looked back. Together with drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad and bassist Ellen Brekken, and recording with an eight-track tape machine, her Trio turn the full force of heavy rock and electric jazz to demonic purposes. It can be sledgehammer sludge, stoned to a crawl as on 'Arigato, Bitch'. Or it's nimble as a phantom on 'Rastapopoulos', a dizzying churn that's named after the archvillain of Hergé's Tintin cartoons. And for the Mollestad Trio at its intuitive, ESP-connected finest, check 'Liquid Bridges'. 'Laughing John' gestures towards the great Mahavishnu Orchestra guitarist as well as a music teacher, named Jon, who heavily influenced Hedvig's development. The album's fine balance between looseness and control follows a year of world touring, and tracks reflect such odd venues as 'La Boule Noire', a former Portuguese disco in Paris whose walls are studded with bullets from a gangland shootout. Enfant Terrible follows the Trio's previous Rune Grammofon releases, the Spellemann (Norwegian Grammy) nominated All Of Them Witches (2013) and Shoot! (2011) and, like labelmates Bushman's Revenge, Elephant9 and Grand General, represent a thrilling new progressive wave of Norwegian avant rock/free metal energy. Don't be fooled by the deceptively innocent portrait of Hedvig herself on the front cover a rare example of designer Kim Hiorthøy working with classic black and white photography, and an unusual departure from Rune Grammofon's familiar digipacks. 'Enfant Terrible is about villains,' says Hedvig. ' Children that don't behave, who break rules and abandon systems. They are a disturbance of the peace. But the regular enfants terribles make changes, they are creative, they force you to think differently.' This Enfant Terrible is one of those.