Bendik Giske

Now on the cusp of his third solo album, Norwegian saxophonist Bendik Giske knows himself well. With his new, self-titled record, he is in his prime as an artist: confident in his voice and abilities, buoyed by critical acclaim from all corners –
including two Norwegian Grammy nominations – and a surge in audiences everywhere. With the intriguing choice of Beatrice Dillon as album producer – clearly the British electronic musician is a fellow traveler in the practice of original aesthetic expression – her influence is immediate and keenly felt. Together, they strip away a layer of melodicism, honing in on pattern and rhythm to bring out a different dimension of his mesmerizing sound.

While again working with single-take recordings, no overdubs, only saxophone and his body, gone is the reverberant space and mellifluous glamor. Giske finds the result akin to musical full-frontal nudity – every detail, every huff and puff audible, no obscuring, no aestheticizing. People may look away when it’s not as pretty, but what’s left feels more present and potent. Confrontational, it demands greater attention, but through its physicality – you can hear and feel his body in the music – it takes you to a flow state, somewhere between ecstasy, elation, and spiritual awakening.

Carmen Villain

The diverse sonic worlds that Carmen Villain has built over her career are shaped by her natural curiosity of sound. Her music hits a sweet spot between dub's blunt rhythmic lilt and cosmic fourth world, with snatches of instruments such as the flute, voice and clarinet creating evocative granular soundscapes and melodies. Her most recent studio album, Only Love From Now On, was released to critical acclaim, landing on several end of year lists, including Pitchfork and Resident Advisor, with the latter calling it “a masterpiece of jazz-informed ambient and downtempo.” Last year she released Music from The Living Monument, with selections from the score she composed for Eszter Salamon’s contemporary dance performance for the Norwegian National contemporary dance company, Carte Blanche. The performance is composed of living tableaux in which the dancers move almost imperceptibly, as if suspended in a state of a motoric vigil, between the static and super-slow motion. Carmen Villain’s music for the piece uses this apparent immobility as a score, creating a fantastic ambience that evokes a world of slowness, in permanent tension, yet without any sign of rigidity or staticity. Viewed from a different perspective, this piece seems to be the perfect continuation of Villain’s approximation to the minimal / ambient genre in some of her recent works. Carmen Villain is half Norwegian, half Mexican, and lives in Oslo.

Eivind Lønning

The Norwegian trumpeter and composer Eivind Lønning has been collaborating with the American composer and producer Jim O'Rourke for several years, among others is Lønning playing on O’Rourke’s soloalbum Shutting Down Here on Portraits GRM. They also collaborated on O’Rourke’s music for the exhibition Calder: Hypermobility at Whitney Museum of American Art in 2017. Most, but Potentially All is a brand new electroacoustic work for trumpet, composed, mixed, mastered and recorded by Jim O’Rourke with Lønning og trumpets and O’Rourke on kyma with all sounds derived from Eivind Lønning recordings. This is the debutalbum by Eivind Lønning. Jim O'Rourke is one of the most significant figures in electronic and experimental music of the last 30 years, with a track record so extensive and far-reaching that it's enough to take your breath away. He produced Wilco's classic album 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot', and has also produced albums with Stereolab, Beth Orton and Johanna Newsom. He has collaborated with Merzbow, Derek Bailey and not least Sonic Youth - a band he was a member of for several years. Since moving to Tokyo 15 years ago, O'Rourke has consistently not played concerts outside Japan, but has done a number of long-distance collaborations. Musician and composer Eivind Lønning has created a unique sound repertoire on the trumpet. He is working at the intersection of improvisation and composition, and is known from the duo Streifenjunko, from the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble (ECM) and solo projects in various forms, but has also worked with Jenny Hval, Toshimaru Nakamura, Fennesz, Eiko Ishibashi, Keith Rowe, Sofia Jernberg, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and more.