Humcrush with Sidsel Endresen: Ha!

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Stale C (keys)
Sidsel Endresen (sampled v)
Thomas Strønen (d, perc)

Label:

Rune Grammofon

November/2011

Catalogue Number:

RCD 2114

RecordDate:

date not given

This fourth album from Norway’s Humcrush further expands the improvisational language developed by Storløkken and Strønen: an odd, electro-acoustic patchwork of spooked echoes, thuds, buzzes and tweets held together by lightning interactions and highly idiosyncratic playing. Storløkken’s spectral keys convey some of the cosmic loneliness he’s brought to Supersilent; while Strønen’s fluttering brushwork sounds like a moth trapped in a paper lampshade. But vocalist Endresen is the biggest personality on the CD, delivering garbled sermons in a pre-Babel, pan-lingual ur-tongue, such as might have been spoken on the fabled continent of Pangaea. Poised between song, speech and scat, her improvisations avoid the semantic steamroller of meaning, flipping from deranged whimper to Indian chants to cold pebble-in-the-mouth pronouncements. When the drums pick up momentum and Storløkken responds with a juddering sub-sonic rumble, you can feel Endresen react with a thrilling change of gear. It’s like a furious argument in which all participants have exactly the same opinion.

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