First of all the debuting Spacemonkey, or maybe it’s just their designer, like to play around with tOggle caSe lettering. But you know that already if you have glanced at the cover of this free improv duo album that derives its title from the boundary between the earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Pianist/keys player Morten Qvenild and Lion drummer Gard Nilssen have played together, by way of complete contrast, on Mathias Eick’s anthemic Skala album, and appear intimately here with only a little synth cameo from producer Jørgen Træen for company (on ‘Digital Cigarettes’).
Qvenild is in the same league as a Craig Taborn or Django Bates, and Nilssen simply exhales pulse and rhythm via drums, gongs, vibes and more, taking the freer end of Jon Christensen’s majestically-quiet rumblings to task possibly as an inspiration, in the process dissolving bar lines, enlarging the pair’s spatial canvas using the studio at their disposal intelligently, and above all responding to the cavernous silences. But there’s also a good deal of electronic clutter to bombard your ears from the pair however discreetly created, liable to throw a curveball to the listener no matter how many times you come to their music. Qvenild is essentially a romantic, and you’ll hear this side of him on the aching ballad ‘Blue Baboon and Carpenter’ Nilssen’s soft detonations on the toggle case-loving title track making you crane for the next passage ahead that turns out, in this case, to be surrounded in a organ-like wash. I’d love to hear this pair live but in the absence of a poster stuck on the door of one of my favourite jazz places to announce they’re in low orbit and coming in to touch down this album is more than enough for now. SG
Released on 12 May
sPacemoNkey’s Morten Qvenild above left and Gard Nilssen