With a concept that joins the dots between deep house and Thelonious Monk it’s looking like a 20 October UK/Ireland release for Bugge Wesseltoft, Henrik Schwarz, and Dan Berglund’s groundbreaking collaborative album Trialogue.
Wesseltoft changed the face of European jazz in the 1990s with his (re)invention of jazztronica, often called nu jazz, and is here on piano, synthesizers, and percussion in the company of another futurist, German electronicist producer/remixer Henrik Schwarz, on computer and small percussion, the trio completed by EST double bass legend Dan Berglund (Tonbruket).
Trialogue (Jazzland) culminates in Monk standard ‘’Round Midnight’, the latter led off by a majestically stark Berglund initial foray, backed by sandpaper percussion rhythm bedded on to keyboards legato lines. Two tracks, ‘Movement Eleven’ and the Terry Riley-esque ‘Movement Seventeen’, feature a violinist, violist, cellist, and bass trombonist from the Luxembourg Orchestre Philharmonique. Yet it's the open-ended trio settings where Berglund’s incantatory presence on solo bass shine through as one obviously strong feature of a strikingly fresh album also found in lustrous dialogue with Wesseltoft on ‘Valiant’, while the tick-tocking ‘Headbanger Polka’ introduces a curveball rhythmic frisson. Indofusion-leading percussion lines bleed through on the mesmering ‘Take a Quick Break’, again another standout early impression from a first listen. Bugge Wesseltoft, Henrik Schwarz, and Dan Berglund play a London jazz festival gig supporting Lau at the Barbican on 22 November.