Paal Nilssen-Love & Mats Gustafsson - I love it when you snore

PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE & MATS GUSTAFSSON - I love it when you snore (SmallTownSupersound, 2002)

Mats Gustafsson: baritone saxophone
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums & percussion

1. I Love It
2. Come Lie Closer
3. Face Make
4. Lightning Bug
5. Shake Off
6. Snarcus Brutalus
7. When You Snore

Norwegian drummer/percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love is a young firebrand who has been gaining recognition in rapid fashion! Nilssen-Love has emerged as one of the top improvising drummers on the Euro-jazz circuit. Here he teams with veteran Swedish reedman Mats Gustafsson.

The duo bobs and weaves through seven improvisational works. The musicians patrol through a sequence of multifarious, free-form grooves where Gustafsson performs solely on baritone sax in concert with Nilssen-Love’s renegade polyrhythmic endeavors. However, the artists sustain constant synergy throughout, evidenced by their shrewd sense of the dynamic and alluring tonal contrasts. The duo’s tight-knit excursions and rhythmically charged micro-themes evolve, disappear, and resurface in odd shapes and sounds. Needless to say, there’s an abundance of rapidly executed twists, turns, peaks and valleys. And while the music they convey resides within the avant-garde scheme of things, the musicians’ coherent dialogues and interleaving fabrics of sound serve as the mark of triumph. Recommended... (from AAJ)

HERE

Rodrigo Amado / Kent Kessler / Paal Nilssen-Love - Teatro

Rodrigo Amado: tenor & baritone saxophone
Kent Kessler: double bass
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

The Portugese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado seems to replace Ken Vandermark in this trio with Kent Kessler on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. Vandermark played often enough with both of them in all possible line-ups and group configurations. Amado is also the sax-player in The Lisbon Improvisation Players, a Portuguese jazz band, with which Denis Gonzalez also made several performances. Amado is a different sax player than Vandermark, a little softer, more searching, more melodious, a little less energetic (but who isn't). The power of this band is that they create music, varying between hesitating and intense, calming each other, encouraging each other, propulsing each other to peaks, but without losing the focus, and with sufficient variation in the way they play their instruments to keep things fresh and exciting, even on the two longer pieces. The second of those, Pandora's Box, starts slow and searching, yet evolves into a rhythmic party full of intensity and musical joy, a piece in which both Kessler and Nilssen-Love get ample space for soloing. On the title song Kessler plays arco, Amado his baritone sax, and together they start the most abstract piece of the album, with the drums adding light touches and accents. This is no blowing fest, but very restrained, elegant and relatively accessible free jazz by three exceptional musicians. Highly recommended. (from FreeJazz)

2006 TEATRO (European Echoes) rapidshare/mediafire

Rodrigo Amado / Kent Kessler / Paal Nilssen-Love - The Abstract Truth

Rodrigo Amado: tenor & baritone saxophones
Kent Kessler: doublebass
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

It is not entirely clear to me what the title of "The Abstract Truth" refers to: a philosophical discussion on the nature of our thinking and knowledge of reality or a reference to Oliver Nelson's classic "The Blues And The Abstract Truth", with an implicit message that there is no blues to be found here? Why leave the blues away otherwise?

To be frank, I wouldn't know. What I do know is that the music is good, and soulful, bluesy even. And it is dedicated to Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico, a surrealist who is known for his deep perspectives, the use of classical mythological iconography, and static cityscapes. But again, the link to the music itself is not always apparent.

The trio consists of Rodrigo Amado on tenor and baritone, Kent Kessler on bass, Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, and after "Teatro", it is the second album of the trio. All eight tracks are freely improvised pieces, yet with a focused logic of their own. Amado is a great saxophonist, not necessarily in the traditional technical sense, but certainly in the musical sense: he can make his instrument sing, speak, tell a story, full of passion and emotion, yet equally full of surprise. The music holds the middle between expansiveness and intimacy, a rare quality and one that is also to be found in Amado's photography : a nice sense of contrast, clarity in the execution, broad themes, yet looked at from a very finite and unique human perspective. And a warm human perspective. Kessler and Nilssen-Love are excellent partners for his music, as usual rich in ideas, and also sensitive in the playing, only listen to the first track "Intro/The Red Tower" : a little capsule of their musical universe, with the arco bass building the tension, abstract sax phrases arise, the drums subtly creating a thundering backdrop and the sax gently and warm-toned introducing the tempo, with the drums picking up the rhythm and the bass switching to a boppish vamp, then the tempo changes again, slowing down, becoming bluesy. A little less than five minutes, but quite wealthy. And well, so is the rest of the album. Very much in the same style as their first album, yet slightly better on this album. Because the pieces are more compact: intimate expansiveness, grand in its finite limitations, universal in its all-too human reality. The blues and the abstract truth, dig? (from Free Jazz)

2009 THE ABSTRACT TRUTH (rapidshare/mediafire)

The Thing - Action Jazz

Mats Gustafsson: baritone, alto & slide saxophones
Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten: bass
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

2006 ACTION JAZZ
AllAboutJazz

Adam Lane, Ken Vandermark, Magnus Broo, Paal Nilssen-Love - 4 Corners

Adam Lane: double bass
Ken Vandermark: baritone saxophone, clarinet & bass clarinet
Magnus Broo: trumpet
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

Recorded in Coimbra, Portugal in June 2006, 4 Corners brings together Lane, Vandermark and Thing drummer Paal Nilssen-Love with Swedish trumpeter Magnus Broo for seven originals. The first curious aspect of this date is that, like Håker Flaten and Bridge 61's Nate McBride before him, Lane has chosen to plug in his upright to a fuzz-box in his amp cabinet. Of course, this is nothing completely new, but here such augmentation is used to tonally align the music with the grungier effects of rock. Granted, the opening "Alfama (for Georges Braque) quickly segues from a punchy waltz to a deft and mercurial duet between Broo and Nilssen-Love. Vandermark's bass clarinet is a raunchy Dolphy over the returning fuzz and feedback-laced vamp, and Nilssen-Love is once again proven to excel at forwarding both delicate open improvisation and throaty ensemble mass.

It's a testament to Vandermark's writing that free-bop and rock can coexist, but in this particular instance, the interaction between the two sides retains an aesthetic wall—Lane's (v)amp is often used more as a reminder of intent than aesthetic device. Lane's "Spin With The EARth, previously heard with reedman Vinny Golia and drummer Vijay Anderson is, in the hands of Vandermark and Broo, a lost Carter-Bradford Quartet number for clarinet and trumpet. The reedman gets ample unaccompanied space for a recital of multiphonic spirals, slapped tongues and pointillistic jabs, soon a dialogue of wood before Nilssen-Love stirs the percussive pot.

Rock is, to a degree, about mass, velocity and time, and coupling low reeds and insistent basslines with darting trumpet and Nilssen-Love's oft-suspended notions of time is an interesting take on "fusion. Perhaps this is closer to its meaning than merely plugging in for a bass solo. However, I wished for a more circular room in this quartet's music.

2007 4 CORNERS

John Butcher & Paal Nilssen-Love - Concentric

John Butcher: soprano & tenor saxophone
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums, percussion

2006 CONCENTRIC

Artifact iTi - Artifact: iTi Live in St Johann

Ken Vandermark - reeds
Johannes Bauer - trombone
Thomas Lehn - analogue synthesizer
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums

2010 ARTIFACT: ITI LIVE IN ST JOHANN

The Thing with Otomo Yoshihide - Shinjuku Crawl

Mats Gustafsson: alto & tenor saxophones
Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten: bass
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums
Otomo Yoshihide: guitar

2009 Shinjuku Crawl

Ken Vandermark & Paal Nilssen-Love - Seven

Ken Vandermark: tenor & baritone saxophones, Bb clarinet
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums, percussion

2006 SEVEN
Infos

Ken Vandermark & Paal Nilssen-Love - Milwaukee Volume

Ken Vandermark: tenor & baritone saxophones, bass & Bb clarinets
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums, percussion

The fifth duo album between Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love may well be their best one. The two musicians find each other blindly for these three lengthy pieces, that vary between rhythmic funky improvisations, slower, more meditative moments and adventurous searches of new sounds. And needless to say, all this in one piece, switching easily from one mood to the other, from one mode to the other, without losing a sense of focus and musical coherence.

The first piece, on tenor, is intense, joyful, full of swing and drive, full of power and subtletly. The second track shows a darker and more experimental side of both musicians, yet the power picks up again on the third piece, with long circular breathing on baritone sax, with Vandermark's sound evolving in some of the strongest volumes that you can get out of it, filling the entire available space, then the thing collapses for some heartrending cries, propulsed into full agony by Nilssen-Love's rhythmic thunderstorm, worthy of the mighty Thor, the ancient Norwegian god, but of course after the storm everything becomes quiet again, yet equally full of tension, maybe because it is the calm before the next storm ... to be heard on the next album, for sure.

You hear two musicians full of confidence in themselves and each other, moving into every possible musical region together, in perfect symbiosis, with the pleasure of playing dripping from every note, from every beat.

Don't miss it. (from Free Jazz)

2010 MILWAUKEE VOLUME PART 1 & PART 2

Ken Vandermark & Paal Nilssen-Love - Chicago Volume

Ken Vandermark: tenor & baritone saxophones, bass & Bb clarinets
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums, percussion

If I'm not mistaken, this is the fourth duo release between Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. The latter seems to enjoy the format, having released duets with John Butcher, Joe McPhee, Mats Gustafsson. The first piece brings Vandermark in his usual highly rhythmic, almost funky improvisation, with Nilssen-Love equally playing up a storm. Things slow down afterward and become real sensitive on the second track, with the occasional outburst of power and anger, and more abstract on the third piece, with Vandermark taking up his bass clarinet on both tracks. The last piece is called "Mort Subite" or "sudden death", the name of a Belgian beer and also a famous café in Brussels. (from Free Jazz)

2009 CHICAGO VOLUME

The Thing - Bag It!

THE THING:
Mats Gustafsson: alto, baritone & slide saxophones, electronics
Ingebrigt Haker Flaten: bass, electronics
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

2009 BAG IT! CD1
2009 BAG IT! CD2
Review
AMG

Michiyo Yagi, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Paal Nilssen-Love - Live! at Superdeluxe

Michiyo Yagi: electroacoustic 17- and 21- strings koto
Ingebrigt Haker Flaten: contrabass, electronics
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums

2006 LIVE! AT SUPERDELUXE