REVIEW: Torben Snekkestad’s “Conic Folded”
Avant-garde jazz appeals to me because here’s a music that has form but goes out of its way to create it with no form. Add to it an avant-garde mentality and it’s freedom of the highest order. That is what you get with Torben Snekkestad, who plays saxophones and clarinet along with Jon Balke on piano and prepared piano and Jonas Westerrgaard on bass) on Conic Folded (ILK).
It’s an album that takes on different textures and themes and one can only imagine certain concepts and scenarios unfolding itself to reveal new textures and themes. The beauty of some of these songs are revealed slowly but surely and the end result is fantastic, as is the case with “September”, “Seated Man”, or “Lovetann”, while others are more like a spaniard in the works (“Francis Faced #2). Then you have tracks like “Noodles or Icecream, Sir?” and “E.P. Flowers” where you’re simply mesmerized as what these three are doing, especially Snkkestad where at times it’s as if his saxophone is an actual voice. But Snekkestad and his many voices are heard hear, and they deserve a lot of uninterrupted attention. The detail of his work on this is really astonishing.
