(Demonoid) Esbjorn Svensson Trio - Seven Days Of Falling (2003) FLAC

Esbjorn Svensson Trio - Seven Days Of Falling



Year Of Release: 2003

Label: Act

Genre: Jazz

Total Time: 00:62:38





Track List:



01.Ballad for the Unborn (6:32)

02.Seven Days of Falling (6:26)

03.Mingle in the Mincing-Machine (7:52)

04.Evening in Atlantis (1:50)

05.Did They Ever Tell Cousteau? (6:05)

06.Believe, Beleft, Below (5:51)

07.Elevation of Love (7:43)

08.In My Garage (4:18)

09.Why She Couldn't Come (7:30)

10.O.D.R.I.P. (14:24)





Personnel:



Esbjorn Svensson (piano)

Dan Berglund (bass)

Magnus Ostrom (drums)





Think of Sweden and jazz isn’t one of the most popular associations, yet there is a thriving Scandinavian scene. This was evinced in a bountiful live festival in London some years back (1999) and is now reinforced by a new album by one of the then showstoppers, Esbjorn Svensson Trio (E.S.T.).



Seven Days of Falling is a predominantly laid-back and user-friendly affair. This is accessible jazz, more suited to the populist imperative “chill out” than some of the clubber’s fall-out that is offered under that banner. Despite unprepossessing titles such as Ballad For the Unborn, E.S.T seem to pack just enough emotion into their stark and simple melody lines, with strident chords bracing an ever watertight trio structure.

Like a stripped-down instrumental Sigur Ros, much of the album – Elevation of Love, Why She Couldn’t Come – can maintain as somnambulatory background music, but it also prompts closer inspection. Ears open especially when the tempo is raised (the exception rather than the rule), as on Mingle In The Mincing Machine, where bassist Dan Berglund indulges himself (not for the last time) with Fuzz effects. Elsewhere, he even uses a bow! On_ Did They Ever Tell Cousteau?_ meanwhile, a highly-compressed and flanged drumset offers a new texture with its ardent pace. Far-removed from frenetic bebop, such forays away from the typically contemplative vein are more in time with the Dave Brubeck Quartet‘s rhythmic fantasies and accordingly, Svensson’s piano occupies a similarly bright and emphatic leadership to the mix.

The critic Stuart Nicholson rather overwrote a comparison between E.S.T. and Radiohead in his review of this album for the Observer Music Monthly, but it is obvious where he is coming from. A wider claim can be made, however: that jazz served up this way appears as a rather enigmatic sum of familiar features, a digest of common harmonies and rhythmic ideas that occur and re-occur in a whole swathe of popular bands. Every rock musician with a premonition or the pretension has been ripping off jazz themes for years, so it seems unremarkable that the traffic turn two-ways. Without treading on “fusion” territory, E.S.T. incorporate a number of production techniques from rock, but thankfully still have the economy of jazzmen: the album was recorded in 8 days and mixed in 5. After the bombastic wig-out finale of O.D.R.I.P., the only vocals appear on a hidden track, Love is Real, courtesy of guest Josh Haden. They are understated in a typically mannered way, and reinstate the melody of track 6, Believe, Belift, Below, guiding the album to a lilting and familiar finish.

By turns straightforwardly uplifting and archly melancholy, Seven Days of Falling has the depth to provide far more delirium than what the title literally offers. D.Rose