All Ice Rec.
Terje Isungset : Igloo (N,2006)**°
Terje Isungset : Igloo (N,2006)**°Innovative jazz percussionist Terje Isungset at one stage tried Ice instruments in his repertoire, in 1999, when he was commissioned to make a piece for the Lillehammer Winter Festival. The work was composed for trumpet, vocals, percussion and ice, and was aired on NRK2 national television. Since then he never left the idea of establishing a complete ice instruments concert. The same year he was asked to come over to the famous Hotel in Sweden to make more ice music, a concert which was broadcast on an international new year’s tv show. In 2001 he was able to record such a concert at the Ice Hotel, with a CD called ‘Iceman Is’. In 2005 he founded all-ice records in 2005, an independent record company to release only music played on ice instruments. This is the first release. The Ice Hotel gave him all conditions he needed, like a igloo recording room and high quality ice cut from a river. It took several days to finish the studio and the instruments. Bengt Carling made the ice harp (played on “Ice Beauty”), while Terje Isungset built and played ice bass drum, icephone, icehorn, and some whirling overtone hose. Except for the strings of the harp (which were made from fish line) all instruments were completely made from river water ice.
Ice has some specific sound spectrum, which I heard already on the nature recording of by Douglass Quin on his Antarctica release, where I could hear the wind blowing against gigantic ice blocks, with a beautiful contrast of sharp tones and deep bass. In combination with the almost electronic music by the seals, this is a beautiful harmonic experience.
Also Terje experienced how this sound spectrum of ice reacted. Smaller instruments often sound sharper and more high pitched than other material, while the ice drum had deeper and wider range of bass sounds than expected from such a form of an instrument, with a warm long echo. Ice breaks easily which can be heard in the tiny instruments or by the sounds of the carving high pitches, and it has the quality of containing a much stretched volume, which results in the deeply resonating tones of bigger instruments. If you hear the recording on bad equipment the pitches are sharper and the resonance becomes too thin and airy, which makes the sound, unpleasantly cold. Then the compositions sound thinner too, and seem to be hanging together more loosely. But when you are able to hear the full range with some depth of sound the whole range gives even spacial warmth of sound, which reveals the vividness of sounds in the air more completely. The most unpleasant sounds are the carvings, which sound almost like carving in stone. Ice is of course a fragile crystal form. With carving the fragility comes forward, while with real percussion the sort of unique vastness comes to life. Especially the first track used a similar fragile sound, I believe that of snow or small particles. I personally still would have preferred to have left out as much as I could, such oversharp sounds, but when experiencing the cold it is logic a musician reacts with more sharp and fast reactions before freezing to death in trance alone. The music is pure improvisation on ice instruments (Terje Isungset)and voice (Sidsel Endresen). The bass ice harp in combination with bass drum and whirlies on "Ice Beauty" are a very nice combination, creating a specific soundtrack. The singing on "Hymn" recalls a quiet semi-Eskimo language. Also "Mammoth" recalls a native tribal ritual with voice and percussion, iceophone and icehorn, before a chase.
The material presentation of the CD is marvellous, a real piece of art, with real water flowing in a plastic vial the left corner of the jewel case, and with a carved plastic slip cover recalling the idea of the carved ice instruments, and recalling the semi-transparency of an ice layer over water. The booklet printed on semi-transparent paper with prints of photographs gives an impression of the deep blue coloured ice instruments. Adorable.
Audio : "Igloo"(or here or here), "Song" (or here or here), "Morning"(or here), "Floating"(or here or here),
"Ice Beauty"(or here), "Iceman 2", "Hymn", "Mammoth"(or here), "Bird" (or here), "Wisdom" or on http://www.grappa.musiconline.no/shop/displayAlbum.asp?id=30605
Other reviews : http://www.blogsandiego.com/terje_isungset.html
German review : http://www.jazzthing.de/review/terje-isungset/igloo.shtml
