Two creative but very different European trios shared Friday’s London jazz festival double-bill. The UK-based Phronesis are expert at balancing the nuanced intimacies of acoustic piano-trio jazz and rock’s percussion-driven drama, while the Norwegian electronicists Supersilent prefer improvised sound collages and raw noise. They also like turning their deliberations up to 11, as was demonstrated by a few fleeing punters with fingers in their ears, so it was a night of striking contrasts.
Phronesis mostly played music from their recent We Are All album – a more rhythm-teasing, less melodically lyrical venture than formerly for them, but teeming with fast-moving improv. It is dedicated to the idea that the squabbling human race might be saved from itself – and the planet with it – if it were to cultivate the empathy that improvising musicians necessarily have – but this weighty agenda never subdued the band’s usual effervescence.
Jasper Høiby’s muscular double-bass intro turned into the implacable hook for Breathless, which pianist Ivo Neame mirrored, queried in a countermelody, and then accelerated into skimming improvisation reminiscent, as his playing often is, of the late John Taylor. The remarkable drummer Anton Eger began with a metallic tingle of brushwork, then unleashed his perpetual-motion race around the kit, establishing an ever-shifting rhythmic backdrop rather than a groove. A rising piano figure over deep-humming bowed bass sounds introduced The Edge, which accelerated into a fast and percussive three-way conversation. Matrix for DA was a jittery, pattern-swapping rhythm-game, Phraternal (from 2014’s Life to Everything) the graceful opposite. Phronesis’s 10-year-old body of work continues impressively to grow.
The gig’s first half belonged to Supersilent, with its original lineup of trumpeter Arve Henriksen, keys-player Ståle Storløkken and electronicist Helge Sten (AKA Deathprod). Their most ferocious electronic onslaughts of timpani-like thundering and aero-engine roars saw off some listeners, but the sonic variety was nonetheless considerable – from Henriksen’s trumpet blend of vaporous sighs and silvery jazz-phrased cascades and his mysterious, boy soprano vocals, to Storløkken’s Fender Rhodes-like underpinnings, and Sten’s percussion-mimicking soundscapes.
• The EFG London jazz festival ends on 25 November.
