Piano, alto sax, drums and percussion are the brushes used to paint this set of 14 intriguing pieces that are minimalistic in conception, but pregnant with meaning, making the "Dark Poetry" title significant and apt.
"Entrances," with its cymbals splashes, plucked piano strings and keening sax fragments, serves as a concise prologue to a moody listen that mainly stays with a chiaroscuro palette. Attentiveness to shades of silence and a wide variety of sonic inflections seems to govern the choices the musicians make in this "every-detail-counts" approach.
This trio of Norwegian musicians made up of pianist Dag-Filip Roaldsnes, alto saxophonist Kim-Eric Pedersen, and percussionist Tore T. Sandbakken work as one voice, judging from the cohesiveness of the vision articulated on this disc in these quasi Haiku — because they are not all that short — but more like concise lyrics in a sequence, variations on a theme, the theme being the play of sound and silence, the musical equivalent of the black and white of words on a page.
I especially liked the track called "This is what we heard," for its resonant fullness with minimal materials (a dry multi-timbral reedy sound from the alto sax, a build-up of dark piano chords, and ripples of percussion of varying shades), although the eerie squeaks, drips and whispers of "Trio for Morton Feldman," were also entrancing. But the whole set shares this less-is-more approach and the trio prove to have a fertile collective imagination in creating vivid variations on light and dark, from the aforementioned "Entrances" to the mournful and touching closing track, "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn," which, like the whole set, seems to highlight absence — what is not there being as important as what is.
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