Food thrive on electronic textures and there’s plenty of spatial awareness above all on this slab of future jazz recorded in an Oslo studio in 2013 with much post-production thickening the technological detail.
Drummer Thomas Strønen’s compositions are stamped all over This is Not a Miracle – the Norwegian along with English saxophonist Iain Ballamy and Austrian guitarist Christian Fennesz. Their darkest album to date Food draw on a heartfelt spiritual dimension, a good example of this found on Ballamy’s passionate solo on the title track.
And it’s on ‘The Concept of Density’ where a lot of threads knit best, Ballamy moving dramatically deeper into the spiritual jazz domain with Strønen hyperactive behind him, the crackly atmospheric work of Fennesz colouring in lots of scrabbling detail.
Overall it’s an elegiac hugely imaginative approach, the woozy opening of ‘Sinking Gardens of Babylon’ a futuristic dirge, nightmarish and dark as if the crosshairs of history have descended to spell doom on an entire civilisation.
Out now. Food are on tour in late-November and early-December with dates in Cork, London, Oxford and Birmingham. Details are here