Jokleba

The acronym derives from their surnames. Since 1990, when its members came together in trio, ‘Jøkleba’ has signalled a process rather than a band of clear-cut stylistic identity. Jøkleba’s unpredictability is its calling card. The present disc is the fifth Jøkleba album, but the first for ECM, and finds old friends Jørgensen, Balke and Kleive working with pulse and colour and texture in collective music-making, emphasizing electronics, trumpet and voice, in freely created pieces which hint at relationships between inspiration and instability. Booklet art by Adolf Wölfli, disturbed painter of idiosyncratic genius, already raises questions about the singularity of artistic vision. Track titles make reference to writings by Sylvia Plath, Laura Restrepo, Sadegh Hedayat, Guy de Maupassant, Djuna Barnes, Malcolm Lowry, and Ken Kesey, in particular to books which deal with the disintegration of identity, “the human mind when it gets lost”, as Jon Balke puts it. All three musicians have recorded prolifically for ECM in a wide variety of contexts, but the particular chemistry of Jøkleba is unique unto itself.

PERSONNEL:

PER JORGENSEN, trumpet, vocals, kalimba, flute
JON BALKE,electronics, piano
AUDUN KLEIVE, electronics, drums, percussion

Recorded May 2014 at Madstun, Fall / Rainbow Studio, Oslo

TRACKS:

01. Vridd 1
02. Bell Jar
03. Blind Owl
04. Beyond The Glass
05. The Nightwood
06. Rodion
07. Horla
08. Vridd 2
09. Tremens
10. Brighton
11. One Flew Over
12. Curious Incident
13. Below The Vulcano
14. Vridd 3