Mats Eilertsen Trio’s And Then Comes the Night – the title comes from the translation of an Icelandic novel – displays the classic ECM sound, chilly yet enticing in that brooding Scandinavian manner.
Heavy metal fans wouldn’t go for bassist Mats Eilertsen and his pals, pianist Harmen Fraanje and Thomas Strønen, they hardly break a sweat on these restrained, pale exercises which were recorded in May 2018 at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo in Italy.
"There is almost no theme-solo-theme playing on this album," Eilertsen notes. "It’s more like a river or whirlpool of moods that carries you with it." That seems spot on, the tight little ensemble indeed rolls along loosely, calm like a river – take the beautiful 22. Occasionally, the three-man canoe bumps into rocks that cause disturbance, knots, or eddys of sound, as on the title track, knots at which the musicians worry away at.
The album opens and closes with the aforementioned 22, whose title derives from July 22, 2011, a fateful date in recent Norwegian history. On that day, 77 people died, victims of bomb and bullet at the hands of the far-Right extremist, Anders Behring Breivik. Eilertsen, himself Norwegian, wrote the piece in ‘stunned response’ to news of the gun attacks on the island of Utøya. "It wasn’t conceived as a homage," he says. "It was just what I did that day."
Curiously, 22 is the perhaps the most beguiling of the melodies on offer here, wistful and tender, as the tunes do not go straight for that melodic jugular. It’s more about somnolent mood and building up a cloud of pacific atmosphere. A fine grower of an album.
Read our review of Mats Eilertsen's previous ECM album, Rubicon here.
