Splashgirl

Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho, London.

08/06/2011

Andreas Stensland L?we piano
Jo Berger Myhre double bass
Andreas L?nmo Knudsr?d drums

This was a low-key affair for Splashgirl, a trio from Norway with their third album due out in August. With that album, “Pressure”, the band is set to drop one of the best of the year, and so their current set list unsurprisingly comprises almost all new material. But whereas “Pressure” features numerous guest contributors, for this show at least the trio were back to basics. No problem. As revealed in a (mercifully brief) pre-gig Q&A, the trio has been together since school days. With a confidence borne of seven subsequent years together, they perform with a self-assurance that belies the seeming awkwardness of their elected spokesman, pianist Andreas Stensland L?we. When asked to talk about Splashgirl’s music, his response was only to say “there isn’t much to say”. Perhaps feeling bad for his host, he went on briefly to elaborate: the initial influence of Paul Bley notwithstanding, Splashgirl’s music isn’t “isn’t really [Jazz] at all. It isn’t.” And with that the talking was over, and the music began.

Perhaps L?we’s disavowal of Jazz (which surely begs a question) could be explained by an understandable wish to disassociate his group from the touristic nostalgia of the supper club circuit. The venue - located in the basement of a Pizza Express chain restaurant - was as unsuited to Splashgirl’s music as their unfortunate collective noun. As plates clattered onto faux-marble tabletops, cutlery clinked, and diners at the next table laughed loudly about how a room full of people attending to live music can really put the mockers on a good chinwag, it was sometimes hard to get into a suitably contemplative mood for Splashgirl, who aren’t in the least bit splashy; sometimes the sound they make is borderline funereal.

The first piece began as a drone, with Myhre playing arco, accompanied by what I assume was a looped, subtle percussion sample (it was hard to see what the musicians were doing. I think all three had some processing facility, but they are all adept at producing non-standard sound from their standard kit with no recourse to effects). A stately ballad soon developed, with that Paul Bley influence never far from the surface of L?we’s playing. Likewise in the following version of “4 is 3 is 2 are one”, the opening track from the bands’ 2007 début album, “Doors”, which opened out from soft pizzicato bass and dappled washes of piano into a warm, pastoral ambience. From here on, every piece was from the as-yet unreleased “Pressure”.

The rhythm of “Concerning this Square” developed in parallel with an insistent woodblock loop before settling into a poised meditation on sustained tones drawn from inside the piano, which the air conditioning did its best to drown out. Another subtle layer of apparently processed sound intruded, and the piece steadily built to an intensity that was then adroitly diffused: the trio demonstrating superb control of the dynamic up- and down-shifts. The following “Ravine” was distinguished by its pleasingly na?ve melody. In gratifying contrast, Knudsr?d began “Devata” using wrapped mallets for a muted, sombre rhythm, while Myhre drew low skeins of sound into an almost subterranean resonance which L?we’s notes punctuated and diffused. The track was then nurtured to a pitch of heightened tension. Set closer “Creature of Light” was relatively abrasive, with L?we plucking sharp, koto-like notes from the piano strings, before developing an abstract shuffle rhythm, but it was finally played out with characteristic quietude.

At times I wanted Splashgirl to break out of their introspection. I fear they’ve been playing for too long to too few people (L?we seemed genuinely surprised by the size of this modestly sized, if mostly rapt and appreciative London audience). Hopefully the release of “Pressure” will change that. It should. And while the overt Paul Bley influence could never be anything other than welcome (L?we, like Bley, and very few other pianists I know, can invoke, and riffle emotively through sense impressions as vivid as memories), he is undoubtedly set to transcend it as Splashgirl blossom further.

As for the name they’ve saddled themselves with (no pun intended), I thought it might be an obscure cultural reference, but the only other Splashgirls that a Google search throws up are a girls-only bicycle delivery service in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. And some ladies in very dodgy photos.

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