<\/p>\n
After three acclaimed and highly original solo albums\u00a0the Bergen-based composer and slide-guitar master Stein Urheim\u00a0is backed by six cherry picked musicians on his new album: Kjetil M\u00f8ster (M\u00f8ster!), Mari Kvien Brunvoll (Building Instrument), Per J\u00f8rgensen (J\u00f8kleba), Ole Morten V\u00e5gan (Trondheim Jazz Orchestra), J\u00f8rgen Tr\u00e6en (Sir Dupermann) and K\u00e5re Opheim (Real Ones).\u00a0\u00a0 Much of the music on \u2018Utopian Tales’ has its origins in a commission from Vossajazz for the Voss Jazz Festival 2016, with Stein Urheim (who in 2010 received the Voss Jazzfestival-Award) further adapting and extending the material through later re-recordings and additional solo pieces. The result is a continuously changing tapestry of styles and textures that forms a kind of evolving commentary on the concept of microtonality and its various social and intellectual connections. Stein Urheim wittily incorporates aspects of this history into \u2018Utopian Tales\u2019, whose titles make reference to the imagined places of Mikrotonia, Carnaticala and Just Intonation Island, as well as the real-life milieu of the Selegrend Movement, a utopian \u2018alternative community\u2019 of the 1970s established near to Bergen, Norway, where Urheim lives. Despite the heavy external baggage of ideas with which \u2018Utopian Tales\u2019 is freighted, the music itself proves intensely rewarding whether one follows the context or not. While the range of styles provides echoes of influences and exemplars drawn from often wildly different types of music, from the eccentric \u2018primitive\u2019 guitar patterns one hears in John Fahey and his followers, to the ambient slide-scapes associated with Roger Eno or Pink Floyd, through to the electric fusion of Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, everything somehow remains all of a piece, and can best be appreciated as a continuously developing suite. On the beautiful penultimate track, \u2018Ustopia – Part Two\u2019, the atmospheric muted-trumpet of legendary Nordic musician Per Jorgensen and the other-worldly voice of Mari Kvien Brunvoll \u00a0(with whom Urheim has already made three critically acclaimed duo albums) add their own distinctive identities to Utopian Tales\u2019 strange yet beautiful sound-world, which ends as it began, in a meditative solo piece for Urheim\u2019s guitar.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After three acclaimed and highly original solo albums\u00a0the Bergen-based composer and slide-guitar master Stein Urheim\u00a0is backed by six cherry picked musicians on his new album: Kjetil M\u00f8ster (M\u00f8ster!), Mari Kvien Brunvoll (Building Instrument), Per J\u00f8rgensen (J\u00f8kleba), Ole Morten V\u00e5gan (Trondheim Jazz Orchestra), J\u00f8rgen Tr\u00e6en (Sir Dupermann) and K\u00e5re Opheim (Real Ones).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Much of the music on \u2018Utopian Tales’ has its origins in a commission from Vossajazz for the Voss Jazz Festival 2016, with Stein Urheim (who in 2010 received the Voss Jazzfestival-Award) further adapting and extending the material through later re-recordings and additional solo pieces. The result is a continuously changing tapestry of styles and textures that forms a kind of evolving commentary on the concept of microtonality and its various social and intellectual connections. Common to many eras, cultures and forms of music, and strongly associated with particular styles (for example, the blues) and certain musical instruments (for example the slide guitar and its numerous variants worldwide), microtonality has since the mid-twentieth century become a powerful cult influence on contemporary music makers, a tradition exemplified by the \u2018maverick\u2019 US composer and instrument-maker Harry Partch, who revived the ancient idea of \u2018just intonation\u2019 through microtonal tuning for his own custom-made instruments.<\/p>\n
Stein Urheim wittily incorporates aspects of this history into \u2018Utopian Tales\u2019, whose titles make reference to the imagined places of Mikrotonia, Carnaticala and Just Intonation Island, as well as the real-life milieu of the Selegrend Movement, a utopian \u2018alternative community\u2019 of the 1970s established near to Bergen, Norway, where Urheim lives. Despite the heavy external baggage of ideas with which \u2018Utopian Tales\u2019 is freighted, the music itself proves intensely rewarding whether one follows the context or not. While the range of styles provides echoes of influences and exemplars drawn from often wildly different types of music, from the eccentric \u2018primitive\u2019 guitar patterns one hears in John Fahey and his followers, to the ambient slide-scapes associated with Roger Eno or Pink Floyd, through to the electric fusion of Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, everything somehow remains all of a piece, and can best be appreciated as a continuously developing suite. On the beautiful penultimate track, \u2018Ustopia – Part Two\u2019, the atmospheric muted-trumpet of legendary Nordic musician Per Jorgensen and the other-worldly voice of Mari Kvien Brunvoll \u00a0(with whom Urheim has already made three critically acclaimed duo albums) add their own distinctive identities to Utopian Tales\u2019 strange yet beautiful sound-world, which ends as it began, in a meditative solo piece for Urheim\u2019s guitar. Also available on Hubro by Stein Urheim: HUBROLP3517 \tStein Urheim: Kosmolodi LP (2012) HUBROCD2539 \tStein Urheim CD\/LP (2014) HUBROCD 2555 \tStein Urheim: Strandebarm (2016)<\/p>\n
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