We live in an era where recorded music can be Pro-Tooled to suffocating, soulless perfection. So, it’s always refreshing to experience an album where the human element is presented front and center – wholly unadorned or studio sterilized. Music captured in a high-energy/high-risk live context where the artistic enterprise either soars or crashes and burns based on a player’s hard-earned instrumental chops and communication with his fellow improvisers.
Catching Fire is just such a record. This double live LP is a speaker-melting collaboration between two of Norway’s most extraordinary musical forces, the electrifying trio Elephant9 and the legendary tone poet of the Fender Stratocaster, Terje Rypdal.
Norway has long been one of the prime outposts where jazz of the most progressive flavor has flourished. A great deal of this can be credited to Manfred Eicher and his ECM record label. Since 1969, ECM has cast a global spotlight on a phalanx of diverse and masterful artists, including Norwegians like saxophonist Jan Garbarek, pianist Ketil Bjørnstad, the electro-dub trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær and Terje Rypdal. Each of the nearly 2,000 albums released on ECM features impeccable sound quality and striking cover art.
Rypdal’s musical history dates back to the early 1960s, when he was a teenage member of the Vanguards and, later, the Dream, Scandinavia’s pioneering psychedelic rock quartet. But his main body of work has been under the permissive auspices of Eicher’s ECM, beginning with his participation in the Jan Garbarek Quartet’s outré jazz modal masterpieces, Afric Pepperbird and SART (1970 and 1971), and his debut solo record, the self-titled Terje Rypdal (1970).
Since then, Rypdal has waxed 30 acclaimed albums for ECM, embracing many styles and influences. These span from blazing Jimi Hendrix-styled rock guitar outings to ornate orchestral suites influenced by Ligeti and Penderecki to modal jazz inspired by his early mentor George Russell, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis, especially the latter’s electrified fusion offerings. His discography boasts the rock/symphony fusion of Whenever I Seem to Be Far Away (1974) and Double Concerto/5th Symphony (2000), the spacious collective improvisation of To Be Continued (1981) with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Miroslav Vitous, Eos (1984), a searing duet with edge-pushing cellist David Darling, and the contemplative all-solo LP, After the Rain (1976), where Rypdal handles guitars, keys, flute, soprano sax and percussion.
My favorite album, which may most resemble the spirit of Catching Fire, is Odyssey (1975). This sprawling two-disc collection weds Rypdal’s mannered melodies and arrangements with fiery rock and jazz improvisations, with many basking in spacious, eerie electronic atmospheres. The recent three-CD re-issue of the album includes bonus live material where Terje showcases this exploratory rock feel and intricate compositions with jazzy big band backing.
Like his idol Hendrix, Rypdal is one of the most instantly recognizable stylists ever to wield a Fender Stratocaster. In the 1970s, he pioneered the use of volume pedal swells, subtle whammy bar vibrato, deep reverberation, echo, and long delays to craft a cavernous and sinuous sound that is all his own. The sonic textures he began employing in his work have impacted many top-flight players, including Bill Frisell, David Torn, and Ben Monder.
Elephant9 are a neo-psychedelic, prog, and jazz-rock trio that first gained international acclaim with their 2008 release Dodovoodoo. Formed in Oslo, the group includes keyboardist Ståle Storløkken, bassist Nikolai Hængsle, and drummer Torstein Lofthus. Together, they have created a dynamic sound heavily influenced by early Weather Report, Tony Williams Lifetime, King Crimson, mid-period Pink Floyd, and Hawkwind. In 2012, they began recording a series of collaborations with guitarist Reine Fiske, resulting in three albums, including the much-praised Psychedelic Backfire II (2019). As Rypdal was a formative influence on Fiske, a natural progression was for the group to record with Terje. Catching Fire is a document of their collaboration captured at a live concert in Oslo in 2017.
The album contains five tracks, with two stretching out over 20 minutes and two more exceeding ten. The album opener, “I Cover the Mountain Top”, is reminiscent of Rypdal’s Odyssey. It opens with eerie organ washes behind Rypdal’s twisting melody. The spacious dissonance is blown away nine minutes in with a melodic fanfare and Hammond organ solo that brings Emerson, Lake & Palmer to my mind. At 15 minutes, Rypdal re-enters to deliver a fierce solo with notes that melt and mutate via his ring modulator effect.
While Storløkken’s keyboard style primarily reveals his jazz chops, it is also hard-edged and rocking, often overdriven with distortion in the style of Soft Machine’s Mike Ratledge and even a bit of Deep Purple’s Jon Lord. The following tune, “Dodovoodoo”, begins with a duet of crunchy Rhodes electric piano and fierce drumming. It is a sound akin to the live offerings of Weather Report’s sophomore album, I Sing the Body Electric (1972). It’s jazz, funk, rock, and punk all rolled into one, with a taste of Mellotron mood thrown in to further the retro vibe. Rypdal’s solo here is uncharacteristic – all slashing chordal trash with nary a single note in sight.
Storløkken’s keyboard work is fantastic throughout. He delivers a bounty of quicksilver solos and spacey textures that can soothe one moment and then suddenly startle. These create shifting foundations for Rypdal to ride over in his solos. Like fusion greats Tony Williams and Billy Cobham, Lofthus is a drummer of immense power and agility. He expertly bridges the gap between jazz and rock and is the engine that fires the whole enterprise. As Ronald Shannon Jackson said about his bass man Melvin Gibbs, Hængsle is “the egg in the meatloaf”. He’s the steadfast center around which all the musicians orbit.
The third tune, “Psychedelic Backfire”, begins with an ominous stop-time thrust, one that sets the stage for a dissonantly bluesy solo from Rypdal backed by Storløkken’s fuzz-toned organ comping. The keyboardist’s solo threads the stylistic needle again – part Art Tatum bop flourish, part heavy rock. At 4:56, “John Tinnick” is the shortest track. It’s a 180 beats-a-minute gallop, a rapido-punk-shuffle with Rypdal turning in another atypical solo. This time, he conjures a cacophony with slide guitar. It a sound reminiscent of avant-garde guitar master Sonny Sharrock in his later “Seize the Rainbow” era.
“Fugl Fønix” is another high-energy workout, a waltz-time romp that commences with a bass pedal groove and organ and drum duet. Lofthus’ polyrhythmic tom-tom beats power one of Rypdal’s best solos of the evening. These are the spacey, unhurried melodic swells that have long been the watermark of his style. It is a peaceful but soaring sound underpinned by the percolating work of this first-rate rhythm section and the keyboardist’s churchy organ.
Elephant9 save the fiercest for last, “Skink”. The closer is amphetamine progressive rock, a true showcase for bassist Hængsle’s fast-walking lines and slides. The organ solo is the most radical on this record. It’s a speaker smoker where it sounds like the band’s amps are ready to call it a night! Halfway in, there’s some hot trading of fours between the keyboardist and drummer, followed by a Rypdal solo that marries Hendrix-y screams with dissonant tapping.
With digital technology and artificial intelligence, much of today’s music is produced without much chance or human factor. Elephant9’s Catching Fire is an antidote to this sterility. It’s a showpiece for what can happen when masterful instrumentalists follow the muse, fueled by an audience that locks into every twist, turn, and all-hell-breaking-loose musical moment.