Search - Arve Henriksen :: Cartography

THRESHELD

Kerry Leimer | Makawao, Hawaii United States | 05/11/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There has always been a place for delicacy in music. In fact delicacy is something music gets across better than many other mediums. Now it need no longer be simply remote or soto voce or reverb laden. The profound strides in digital recording are finally capable of delivering a delicacy with presence, with force, specificity and nearness. And the use to which Henriksen puts delicacy in this recording makes it the principal organizational attribute and compositional technique. Free of false or real cadence, the pieces provide access to a new sort of auditory experience, one of apprehending rather than merely comprehending.



There are many moments within "Cartography" that choose to intimate rather than demarcate an untouchable and immersive music. For anyone who managed to browse through Eno's "Oblique Strategies" some decades ago, a card I often drew (paraphrasing now) read "Imagine the music as a series of disconnected events". This is difficult to do while still achieving enough coherence to be perceptible as music to the listener. Yet here, Henriksen accomplishes something very much implied rather than stated, and does so without disorienting or disconnecting completely from structure. And that is perhaps the single most compelling strength of this particular work: it insistently shifts the perception of the listener to an intricate quiet issuing from the reassuring envelopes of commanding presence."

A Sonic World All It's Own...

P. Import | USA | 07/17/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Although a fan of the ECM record label, I favor more uptempo jazz. That being said, this album is unbelievable in creating its own identity...It captures and hooks you. Arve Henriksen has also found is own unique voice on the trumpet, which is an element of jazz in it's own right. You should give this album a try, it's NOT new age, but something else entirely..."

A handful of tracks are compelling, but the rest feels too m

Christopher Culver | 11/09/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"In the 2008 ECM release CARTOGRAPHY, the Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen offers 12 cuts in a rather unusual jazz vein. The basis of each cut are ambient soundscapes, mainly crafted by Erik Honoré on synthesizer who also uses samples from Trio Mediaeval, but occasionally with live input by Eivind Aarset on guitar and Audun Kleive on percussion. Henriksen then plays his trumpet on top of these, in an exceedingly spare, breathy style.



Over the first couple of tracks, the effect is magical. The opening "Poverty and its Opposite" needs only a handful of trumpet notes to express something vast. On the second piece, "Before and Afterlife", the musician David Sylvian reads his own poetry, which reminds me of Gary Snyder's work. Unfortunately, from there most of the rest of the album seems filler, repeating the same general setup but no longer offering anything powerful. When Sylvian appears once more on "Thermal", the effect is meh. I think this release will appeal more to fans of ambient musicians like Harold Budd than to jazz afficionados. I sometimes listen to the opening tracks and the final one, but I'm not drawn back to the album as a whole."