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If the duo is the most conversational form of jazz, the
script for I Love It When You Snore could have been
written by Samuel Beckett. Paal Nilssen-Love and
especially Mats Gustafsson are a couple of the best known players to emerge out of the '90s
Scandinavian free/avant jazz scene, having recorded
plenty with the likes of Ken Vandermark and Peter
Brötzmann. This brief thirty-two minute duo
recording is more unusual than most of the other
of the already exceptional recordings either has been involved with.
Gustafsson really brings it on with his unique vocabulary
of abstract, pops, clicks, squeaks, screams, and howls.
There’s a very strange dynamic created between his
baritone sax, which he plays exclusively throughout
this recording, and Nilssen-Love’s rolling, percussion
explorations. They’re both working a particularly
unemotional space here, focusing on creating more
intellectually challenging soundscapes. Sometimes
they seem to be channeling the most abstract, beatless
electronica through their warmer, acoustic
instruments, played by human hands and minds
instead of laptop computers. Their stutter-step
improvisations demand your undivided attention, and they
will reward it too. But this is definitely not background
music.
Visit Smalltown Supersound on the web.
This review originally appeared in
All About Jazz: Los Angeles.
~ Jeff LeVine
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Track Listing: I love it, Come he closer, Face make,
Lightning bug, Shake off, Snarcus brutalis, When
you snore
Personnel: Paal Nilssen-Love- percussion; Mats Gustafsson- baritone saxophone
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