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P\u00e5 sitt sjette Hubro-album presenterer komponisten, bandlederen og den virtuose gitaristen Stein Urheim<\/strong>\u00a0 et nytt sett med komposisjoner spesielt laget for en gruppe best\u00e5ende av tre av hans favorittmusikere: bassist Ole Morten V\u00e5gan og perkusjonister\/multiinstrumentalister Hans Hulb\u00e6kmo og K\u00e5re Opheim. Her blandes world, jazzimprovisasjon med pop-Americana.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As well as acting as composer\/arranger and playing various guitars and related gizmos, Bergen-based Stein Urheim also sings on the album\u2019s three vocal tracks, delivering his own eco-conscious yet teasingly enigmatic lyrics with a deep-voiced, Californian-accented charm. The result is a winning, immensely likeable and listenable collection of songs that matches compulsive tunefulness\u00a0with superb drumming and enough expertly-played licks – including some killer bottleneck slide – to satisfy the most demanding of guitar fans. The contrast with Stein Urheim\u2019s two most recent Hubro releases – the bare-bones solo acoustic set \u2018Simple Pieces & Paper Cut-Outs\u2019 , and the earlier concept album \u2018Utopian Tales\u2019 (a socio\/musical investigation into microtonality and utopian communities, in whose band Vagan, Opheim and producer J\u00f8rgen Tr\u00e6en also appeared), could on the face of it not be greater, but there is a connection.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSome of the music had its origin in the VossaJazz festival commission from 2016 that also resulted in the album \u2018Utopian Tales, and the other tunes were mainly written in Berlin in the summer of 2018 during an artist-residency there\u201d (the same residency that led to the creation of \u2019Simple Pieces & Paper Cut-Outs\u2019), says Urheim. \u201cI wanted to make a percussive album with a strong focus on drums, but with many ideas and arrangements for counterpointing melodies played with different stringed instruments, and vibraphone. I had also written lyrics for some of the tunes, and I wanted to see what it would be like to sing all of it myself. We did a three-day session at Paradiso studio in Oslo in December 2018 with engineer Christian Engfeldt. In early February this year I overdubbed all the rest of the arrangements with Jorgen Traen in Duper Studio in Bergen, where we also mixed and finished the production of the album. I really like listening to to this set myself, which is not always the case with my own music. It has a lot of layers, and the composed themes and the improvisation go hand in hand with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n The album opens with the short but striking title track, a beautifully-played instrumental prelude where Urheim\u2019s pedal-driven guitar almost seems to weep the melody like a saxophone solo. If the background of Indian drones and percussion already seemed reminiscent of the Impulse! recordings of John Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders, the subsequent track, \u2018Brave New World\u2019, accentuates the comparison, its opening riff sounding like a paraphrase of Coltrane\u2019s famous ‘Giant Steps\u2019. As the initial riff is succeeded by a new, free-floating figure, it\u2019s possible to hear further echoes of Coltrane\u2019s wide-ranging influence, from the Byrds\u2019 raga-rock classic \u2018Eight Miles High\u2019 to the epic space-jams of the Grateful Dead. The Dead\u2019s rhythm guitarist Bob Weir compared his role to that of pianist McCoy Tyner in the classic Coltrane Quartet, serving up new chordal shapes for lead guitarist Jerry Garcia to run with. And so \u2018Downhill Uplift\u2019 goes, each additonal track revealing a further twist to the developing story.<\/p>\n Of course, Stein Urheim is his own man with his own music, but among the many pleasures afforded by \u2018Downhill Uplift\u2019 is the breadth of references it invokes. We also travel a long way from restrictive notions of what does or does not constitute jazz: from the gritty slide-guitar playing we might easily associate with Ry Cooder, David Lindley or Little Feat\u2019s Lowell George (who recorded with jazz drummer Chico Hamilton), to ambient interludes of multi-tracked, overlayed guitars and guitar synths, to the singer-songwriter context of the very impressive vocal tracks. But despite its wilful eclecticism, Urheim manages to create an overarching mood and structure that allows \u2018Downhill Uplift\u2019 to function as a satisfyingly through-written suite. By alternating experimental instrumentals with strong sustaining themes and the occasional reward of a properly poppy, radio-friendly ear-worm, Stein Urheim has succeeded in creating a guitarist\u2019s album that is defined by so much more than the guitar alone<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n P\u00e5 sitt sjette Hubro-album presenterer komponisten, bandlederen og den virtuose gitaristen Stein Urheim<\/strong>\u00a0 et nytt sett med komposisjoner spesielt laget for en gruppe best\u00e5ende av tre av hans favorittmusikere: bassist Ole Morten V\u00e5gan og perkusjonister\/multiinstrumentalister Hans Hulb\u00e6kmo og K\u00e5re Opheim. Her blandes world, jazzimprovisasjon med pop-Americana.<\/p>\n