ANDREAS WILDHAGEN - Beauty No Beauty

In Norway there is an entire generation that grew up memorizing the records of the Coltrane family and Chicago's AACM, then cut its teeth in the countless projects fueled by the irrepressible talent of Paal Nilssen-Love. Such is the case of Andreas Wildhagen, a drummer born in 1988 who has already played in a dozen-plus projects (among them: Akmee, Andreas Røysum Ensemble, Extra Large Unit, Finity, Jon Rune Strøm Quintet, Jonas Cambien Trio, Lana Trio, Nakama, Orter Eparg, Paal Nilssen-Love Large Unit, Tobias Lindstad Collective), as well as releasing a couple of albums under his own name: "No Right No Left" (Nakama, 2016) and "Troposgrafien" (Nakama, 2018), the latter with saxophonist Kasper Skullerud Værnes, who also joins Wildhagen's new quartet, Spiralis.
Completing the lineup on "Beauty No Beauty" are pianist Anja Lauvdal (Eirik Hegdal Eklektisk Samband, Moskus, Skadedyr, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra) and double bassist Adrian Myhr (Arrigo Cappelletti, Carlo Maria Nartoni, Johan Lindvall).

The album opens with a groovadelic pattern that instantly sends Værnes's saxophone into orbit ("Solar Activity"), playing as if heralding the arrival of a new era. The other musicians follow it like an oracle. The improvisation is collective and never overbearing. At just four minutes and ten seconds, it's long enough to tune the listener's antennae.
"Entropy" follows without a break, with Lauvdal's synthesizers lending a lunar allure to the track's slow, enveloping drift.

The themes of the album's nine improvisations unfold in a gripping way, alternating faster, groove-rich passages with more descriptive, spiritual ballads.

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02/01/2025