Arve Henriksen - Hammond Organ
Helge Sten - Hammond Organ
St?le Storl?kken - Hammond Organ

This is the first Supersilent recording since the departure of percussionist Jarle Vespestad, after more than a decade of Supersilent as a consistent cohesive unit, in 2007. The group was formed as an amalgamation of Norwegian free jazz trio Veslefrekk (Henriksen, Storl?kken and Vespestad) and producer and live electronics artist Helge ?Deathprod’ Sten. They followed up an evidently rewarding initial performance with the abrasive three hours of recordings captured on 1-3, which in 1997 was the Rune Grammofon label’s first release. The band audibly improved with each new release until 6 (2002), which represents the group at their most sublime. The live concert captured on the DVD-only 7 (2004) is magnificent: to my mind one of the definitive musical statements of our times, it represents a truly contemporary evolution of Jazz at its spontaneous, cliché-free best. Their last album, 8 (released 2005), although excellent in itself, indicated that the highs of their previous two offerings had proven hard to follow.

Supersilent have always taken pains to present themselves, through the minimalist packaging and documentation of their products, as a single multi-tasking entity. However until the departure of Vespestad the individuals in the group remained readily identifiable with their respective original instruments: trumpet and voice (Henriksen), drums (Vespestad), keyboards (Storl?kken), and electronics and production (Sten). Vespestad’s departure, apparently announced the day before sessions for this album were to begin, has necessitated a rethink. The depleted Supersilent held three recording sessions, for only one of which all three remaining members played Hammond organs. The four tracks that comprise 9, each just over 12 minutes long and presumably extracted from open-ended ?live’ improvisations (there are no overdubs), were all drawn from that session. On first hearing the restricted musical palette the absence of percussion sounds, in particular, is startling.

The album begins quietly. I was initially too slow to revise expectations and couldn’t help but unconsciously form comparisons between the old and new Supersilent. The second track, in it’s movement through passages of heightened dynamics and mutedly percussive sounds, comes closest to fulfilling those expectations. The third track retreats into a more measured and suspended atmospherics. The fourth is yet more rarefied. The whole thing virtually demands close listening, and this first play-through on a sound system left me unconvinced that the new Supersilent have anything particularly rich to add to the hours of sound-sculpting lately produced in the arenas of ambient music, lower-case improv. and sound art. I was wrong. A second listening on a personal stereo revealed that to think in terms of ?old’ and ?new’ Supersilent is specious. The essentials of the Supersilent sound remain intact while the groups’ improvisational tendencies - the dynamics of their responses to one another and their characteristic, collective organizational impulses - are essentially unchanged. This is recognizably a Supersilent album, and it is the fresh perspective on that body of work that their previous recording narrowly failed to provide. Listening on headphones really allows the listener to hear how completely the group exploits the more subtle sonic possibilities of the Hammond, from the percussive sound of the organ’s distinctive tones and overtones right down to the feathery movement of air generated by its tone wheels, fluttering on the edge of audibility. The first piece, 9.1, which I had almost failed to register on first hearing, is, in its breathy lightness possibly one of the most perfectly resolved pieces of music Supersilent have yet recorded.

It seems reasonable to assume that the more conventionally instrumentated sessions were rejected because the absence of Vespestad substantially discomfited the group to prompt them to try something new. The Hammond format was an inspired move, as 9 is not just a brave, bold release but almost literally a breath of fresh air. It’s gorgeous, but perhaps too liminal to represent a full development in the Supersilent life cycle. To adopt an insect analogy, Supersilent are seemingly experiencing an instar phase, having shed the muscular exoskeletal of Vespestad’s drumming but not yet ready to assume a new form. Their maturity as musicians, however, is nowhere more evident than on this supremely confident release, and their next offering will be something to await with real expectation.

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