Starlite Motel - Awosting Falls (2016)

It’s not the first time we find Scandinavian and American musicians playing together – some of the bands founded by Ken Vandermark have this characteristic –, but Starlite Motel comes with a different focus than the ones trying to reconnect the techniques and aesthetics of improvisation developed in Europe with its jazz roots in the United States. In “Awosting Falls”, non-idiomatic and idiomatic improv meets with… psychedelic rock. Those procedures and styles are very well known by the mastermind of this new enterprise: Gard Nilssen, the Norwegian drummer of the rock-oriented, electric bands Puma and Bushman’s Revenge, but also of hardcore post- free jazz groups like Acoustic Unity and Cortex. His Nordic companions are also familiar with it, namely saxophonist Kristoffer Berre Alberts, who brought jazz to noise domains with partners like Lasse Marhaug and Maja Ratkje, and bassist Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten (now living in Texas, by the way), a member of the free jazz / free rock band The Thing and leader of the metal / hip-hop / jazz combo The Young Mothers. The American in the quartet is Jamie Saft, one of the most permanent of John Zorn’s collaborators, part of Electric Masada and also the author of “Trouble: The Jamie Saft Trio Plays Bob Dylan” and leader of a band including the jazz mainstream bassist Steve Swallow, The New Standard. The music is puzzling and sensuous, cosmic and groovy at the same time. Now you can dream with a beat.