Dans les arbres - Volatil (Ramure Brindille Surgeon Fleche) (2019)

Fifteen years of activity for only four albums released: a relatively small output, that of the international quartet Dans les arbres, but published by the best sector labels, with the first two works on ECM (s / t, "Canopée") and a third on Hubro ("Phosphorescence"). And it is now the turn of another Norwegian edition with the Sofa by Ingar Zach - it was only a matter of time, being a member of the formation too -, which gives "Volatil", a live recording made on 16 March 2018 in Bologna, on the occasion of the annual AngelicA contemporary music festival.

"Ramure, brindille, surgeon, flèche" (literally branching, twig, surgeon, arrow) is the cryptic title of the performance of over fifty uninterrupted minutes, presented last year at the Teatro San Leonardo. If already improvisation was the primary root from which their creativity sprang, with such a temporal expansion there is even more clearly the impression of assisting the patient and unpredictable delineation of an action painting, free from calculated developments or climaxes and solely entrusted to the individual mutual listening sensibilities of Xavier Charles, Ivar Grydeland, Christian Wallumrød and Ingar Zach.

For the first twenty minutes at least, the four converse unhurriedly and at a mostly atmospheric level: Charles's clarinet stands out above all with treble and ornithological trills, supple arabesques and drones with phantom tones, while the strokes of Wallumrød's prepared piano and Zach's drums the laying of an amorphous and floating percussive environment is shared; Grydeland's electric guitar is perhaps the most discreet and fatuous presence, between point-like interventions in harmonic or tapping and coming and going with volume pedal and wah.
After this phase the sum of the parts begins to fill in the empty spaces and ideally shorten the distances, tightening the interplay until reaching an appreciable degree of excitement but never resulting in a total saturation. Close to the half hour, a lot of tension is generated and the percussions surround the sound space with cymbals, stubborn piano and dull thuds of the bass drum.
In less than no time, the performance returns to an even more radical hermeticism, where every gesture resembles the involuntary jolt of an organism with a precarious balance. In its disorderly meditative mood, the suite ends up furrowing the random expressiveness of Cage and Feldman's being-time, evoking the last twenty years of sessions signed by the legendary AMMs. Only in the final ten minutes does any shake and ripple return to the surface woven by the quartet with absolute rigor and self-control.

Fiercely a-descriptive and unclassifiable, "Volatil" is yet another essay by a congregation of free spirits who carry on in their own way a glorious tradition that, today as today, seems to find new fertile soil only in the Scandinavian area. However, further and similar listening opportunities are also welcome in our country, perhaps beyond the ever virtuous work of AngelicA.