EST - Polyphonic spree
Thursday, August 31, 2006
EST return this month with their tenth album, their first since the live version of Viaticum was issued as a special package last year along with the original studio album. Such a remarkable record company response was indicative of the initial album’s popularity, with strong demand in the UK and many other parts of Europe. So much for the album’s title tease that the group was performing its last rites. The group over more than a decade has achieved extraordinary levels of success for a jazz trio on the international jazz circuit, especially in the last five years. Even the notoriously insular American jazz community has responded warmly, if tardily, to pianist Esbjörn Svensson, bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Öström. With their hi-tech light show, cranked up concert hall sound, and positive overtures to young rock fans – crucially without the lovingly honed but ubiquitous Radiohead covers – plus a finely honed post-Jarrett European group mentality, EST make perfect sense. It’s with a sense of the baroque that EST turns to as the backdrop to their new album, as Esbjörn Svensson tells Stuart Nicholson
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