Lotte Anker · Pat Thomas · Ingebrigt Håker Flaten · Ståle Liavik Solberg

Iluso Records presents His Flight’s At Ten, a stunning live concert recording by free music luminaries Lotte Anker (saxophones), Pat Thomas (piano), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (double bass) and Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums and percussion).

Copenhagen-based Lotte Anker is a saxophone player and composer of unsurpassed reputation in the creative music world. She works in the field between experimental jazz/improvisation and contemporary music and leads acclaimed trios with Craig Taborn/Gerald Cleaver and Sylvie Courvoisier/Ikue Mori. Anker has performed with Tim Berne, Okkyung Lee, Joelle Leandre, Raymond Strid, Sten Sandell, Andrew Cyrille, Phil Minton and many others.

Electronic experimenter and piano player Pat Thomas is a unique voice in the UK/European creative music scene. Embracing improvisation, jazz and new music, his significant contribution has included performances and recordings with Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra, Lol Coxhill, Steve Noble and Alex Ward.

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten is an internationally sought after double and electric bassist in the jazz, free jazz, and improvised music worlds. He is most known through his work in the hard-hitting bands The Thing, Atomic and Scorch Trio. Flaten has worked with Joe McPhee, Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen Love, Neneh Cherry, Thurston Moore, and Ken Vandermark.

Drummer Ståle Liavik Solberg is a central part of Oslo's thriving improvised music scene. Working with ensembles VCDC, Will it float? (with John Russell, Steve Beresford & John Edwards), Silva-Rasmussen-Solberg trio and in duos with Fred Lonberg-Holm and John Russell. His endlessly creative drumming is renowned in the world of free jazz/creative music.

His Flight’s At Ten comprises three long form pieces of spontaneously improvised music by this quartet of acclaimed improvisers in an encapsulating concert performance at the 2016 Blow Out! Festival in Oslo.

Departure begins as a cacophony of crash cymbals and sustained cluster chords. Anker’s growling entry bulldozes through the clutter, lifting the band to a dizzying height of frenzy. Long tones segway into a sparse and lineal movement of minimalism and delicately suggestive interspersions before Anker’s multiphonic experiments inspire a pedalling down beat and oozing groove. Thomas’ succinct piano solo offers sparse resonating statements before barrelling drums and bass and tongue-slapping reeds morph the music into a closing hypnotic rumble underlying short motivic statements spat from Anker’s saxophone.

In Flight commences cautiously with each performer delicately layering plink plonking statements in a swiftly rousing conversation. Anker’s short bursting phrases reach across the group-talk before a series of impromptu stop-start moments begin a passage of gleeful expressions realised through virtuosic extended technique. Thomas’ unhinged montuno inspires long notes and scattering drums at which point the band are truly in full flight. Dissipating squeeks and short running phrases by Thomas on piano lead into a Solberg cymbal solo. Piano and saxophone join with high scraping glissandi, this delightful interplay carrying the group through to the end.

Arrival, the third and final piece, begins with percussively bowed bass joined by breathes, whistles and intricate dealings from within the bowels of the piano. A stunning suspense is patiently created through the group’s innate spatial awareness. Gentle and ghostly, Thomas and Flaten dance in synchronised wave-like motion luring the band into the same before together embracing a violent and thrashing dance that cascades gracefully to a final moment of reflection.

All the energy and nuance of this captivating convert are captured in this stunning live recording. Both exhilarating and hypnotic, the album is a cutting edge release traversing the worlds of contemporary classical music and avant-garde jazz by a group of improvisers at the forefront of the creative music world.