HEDVIG MOLLESTAD & TRONDHEIM JAZZ ORCHESTRA

Maternity Beat RUNE GRAMMOFON

Prolific Norwegian jazz guitar great amps up the ambition.

In 2020 the London Jazz Festival replaced its normal programming with a series of pandemic-friendly livestreams. Amid the YouTube performances, the première of Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad’s Maternity Beat – filmed at the Molde Jazz Festival in Norway that July – was truly something to behold. There was an actual crowd in attendance, which seemed like some sort of miracle, but there was also an amplified breadth to Mollestad’s new material, as if the enforced claustrophobia of lockdown had forced her to expand her music upwards and outwards.

Nothing’s quite that simple, of course. Maternity Beat – written with Mollestad’s experience as a mother in mind – began to take shape in 2019, and she was already changing things up: 2020’s solo album Ekhidna was recorded with a sextet in the wake of seven albums with her trio. But the corralled chaos of this new music, made with the 12-piece Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, seemed to chime perfectly with the turbulence of the real world at that moment.

Two years on, Maternity Beat is no less tumultuous. The first part of opening track On The Horizon matches the horror of watching migrant families drowning at sea with sawing, droning dissonance, before Part 2 sees the pace pick up, the orchestra arrive, and the sense of panic become unsettlingly palpable. Do Re Mi Ma Ma is similarly disconcerting, a stumbling, stuttering whirl with eerie, childlike voices hovering above a sea of shattered percussion.

It’s only as fourth track Donna Ovis Pepper heads towards a climax that Maternity Beat offers any sense of hope, but from there it really doesn’t let up. Little Lucid Demons/Alfons leaps about wildly, from giddy woodwind to slick, jazz-pop elegance. It also features a sax solo straight from the John Coltrane school of spiritual jazz, before slipping into the kind of sonic territory occupied by Snarky Puppy at their most bombastic. All Flights Cancelled throws in some spiralling motorik momentum, while Her Own Shape is almost Disneyesque in its prettiness. The closing pair – Maternity Beat and Maternity Suite – follow a path from disconcerting, lingering quiet to a glorious, cacophonous place that sounds like Rotary Connection covering Relayer-era Yes.

“I used to be reluctant about talking about gender and motherhood in relation to what I was doing as a musician,” says Mollestad. After an hour of music that’s sometimes confusing, frequently exhilarating, occasionally terrifying, and ultimately extremely rewarding, one can only hope she’s going to make some more.

FREQUENTLY EXHILARATING, OCCASIONALLY TERRIFYING, AND ULTIMATELY REWARDING.