Hyperboreal Trio came by its name honestly. Danish alto saxophonist Signe Emmeluth and Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten have both lived in the far-northern metropolis of Trondheim, Norway, and that’s where the they first convened with Argentine-born, Berlin-based drummer Axel Filip. But the music that they improvise is, in its own idiosyncratic fashion, far from chill.
While the two Scandinavians are well-known to each other from countless gigs and shared membership in bands, it was Filip who clinched this combination. Filip had met Håker Flaten and Emmeluth separately, and the trio first convened in Trondheim’s Northern Studio for the session that yielded this album. It doesn’t take long to hear why the threesome has taken on a life beyond that encounter. While each musician has a strong personality and personal sound, their collective dynamic also stands apart from what each of them does elsewhere.
The acoustic outfit sounds highly charged throughout Hyperboreal Trio, but not in a conventional free-jazz fashion. On “Stone Cold” and “Ahuyentado,” Emmeluth, Håker Flaten and Filip apply a staccato attack, which adds up to a layered whirlwind of dot-dash signals. “Come Closer” is made up of complementary-but-separate actions, each player in their own corner. Even when Emmeluth fuses atomic elements into scraps of melody, the other two tug at her playing with interventions that distort the output’s shape without letting it fly apart.
The inventiveness of this poised and volatile music never flags. It’s easy to see why Emmeluth, Håker Flaten and Filip have taken this album’s name as their own and commenced gigging around Europe. [Relative Pitch]
—Bill Meyer
