Stephan Meidell

Metrics HUBRO. CD/DL/LP

Norwegian composer’s deep abstractions for guitar, electronics and baroque chamber quintet.

ANOTHER MONTH, another excellent release from Norwegian jazz and improv label Hubro. For his second solo outing, after 2014 debut Cascades, Meidell (who plays guitar, bass and synths with the label’s kosmische noise trio Cakewalk) has expanded the site-specific monochrome improv of that first album (recorded in industrial silos and meat lockers) adding a quintet of musicians playing piano, clarinet, baroque violin, harpsichord and hardanger fiddle (labelmate Erlend Apneseth). Drawing on such influences as spy soundtracks, horror scores, musique concrète, minimal techno, field recordings and free jazz, Meidell blends ancient and modern, urban and pastoral moods for an album that pulls the listener through strange historic landscapes in which wild animal cries, early music drones, wintry Japanese percussion and futuristic machine rhythms mutually coexist.