Aalberg / Kullhammar / Zetterber / Santos Silva - Basement Sessions Vol.4 (The Bali Tapes) (2017)

The fourth volume of the series “Basement Sessions” have again (like the previous “Vol. 3”, with Jørgen Mathisen as special guest) an addition to the trio formed by Jonas Kullhammar, Torbjorn Zetterberg and Espen Aalberg, the name of the drummer showing this time upfront because the compositions have his authorship – the extra element now is the Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, presently living in Stockholm, as the other musicians here. Once again, the “mutated hard bop” concept followed by the band is in full application, but there’s a substantial difference confirming the subtitle “The Bali Tapes”, and not only to confirm that the recording was done in Indonesia: all the musicians play gamelan instruments besides their own, and among Aalberg’s pieces one is a Javanese traditional tune. There’s no contradiction of the new proceedings with the post-Coltranean identity of the project – faithfull to the spiritual explorations put in music by the late saxophonist, what we find here is a group ritual diving deep into the inner soul of jazz and the souls of everybody involved, with a mercurian drive and a lyricism that, in the middle of all the fire going on, keeps astonishingly elegant. The Swedish scene keeps surprising us with unexpected ideas put into old formats with aspects yet to discover, and Santos Silva shows, once again, that there’s no boundaries for creativity. A must listen, must have record of the present day European jazz.