There is something up close and personal about Palle Mikkelborg's quietly eloquent fluglehorn and trumpet. He is hinting at great presences, at hidden intimations, at barely buried passions, certainly in the first three tracks of this often entrancing album, Oktober, Strands and Song for Nicolai which seem like a natural trio of pieces.
Meanwhile, Thomas Morgan is in perfect sympathy on his tentatively talkative double bass, while Jon Christensen's drums are not afraid to batter and feint at the majestic melting glacier that is going down.
Danish guitarist Jakob Bro is the perfect foil for Mikkelborg, delivering resonant chords with a fair dash of reverb as both veterans lie back into the music as though it were their sweet chariot. "I've known Palle since I was a kid, " says Bro. "I was playing trumpet myself then, and listening to him a lot." Both musicians still live in Copenhagen which city has a long, venerable jazz tradition.
The album came about in an appealing fashion, it should be said, there were no great board meetings at the crack of dawn. Mikkelborg and Bro began to meet to talk and drink wine "and play a bit every few weeks" and that was after two concerts together with Christensen and Morgan as far back as 2014. So it was no rush job.
Track four, View, gets more cerebral down-and-dirty, less mournfully plangent, with Bro putting grunge into the petrol. An air of fragmentation drives a more avant-garde feel, there is a marked change in tone, in texture. is there existential angst here? I have no idea what might blow down the cobbles and windy boulevards of Copenhagen these times but this very fine, richly suggestive recording seems to be trying to tell me things about that wonderful city.
Lyskaster, in any case, returns to that fey, warmer ambience and Hamsun gets even more angelically chilled and pacific. So this crew knows about shadings and building a vibe that will hold you until the end and on repeat plays too, make no mistake.
