Given that they are a band famous for not even communicating with each other before or after their improvised performances, no-one, not even their members, can say that Supersilent are a predictable band. Having said that, the departure of drummer Jarle Vespestad seems to have knocked them into an entirely irregular orbit. Supersilent 9, their first as a trio, featured remaining members Arve Henriksen, Ståle Storløkken and Deathprod (I like to think that even Henrik Sten’s mum calls him Deathprod) restricting themselves to Hammond organs, producing an album of wholly unfamiliar and entirely unearthly drones. As fascinating as this was, I was as confident as I could be in the circumstances that the three keyboard attack wouldn’t be sustained for long; the instrumental lineup they have settled on for 10 is as unexpected as I er, expected.
The departure of Vespertad means that the juddering mechanical hyperkineticism he provided is once more absent. Yet it seems like rather than this being something they have to work around, the new lineup has in fact given them enhanced freedom, opening their eyes to wider opportunities. As on 9, a minimalist ambience pervades the album, but this time it is one that borrows more from recognisable jazz forms. The once omnipresent sound of Storløkken’s keyboards have been replaced for the most part by piano, Henriksen has switched back to trumpet, and the resulting sessions have birthed something which on first listen seems to pitch up between the cool, ambient jazz that Norway is relatively famous for, and more experimental minimalists like The Necks.
The album opens with the unmistakeable, and much missed on 9, sound of that trumpet, but it is quickly joined by some Chris Abrahams-like piano phrases; Sten is no more than a ghostlike presence in the shadows behind. With Storløkken and Sten providing such sparse backdrops, there are huge wide open spaces for Henriksen to exploit, his muted horn at its most lyrical on the soft-as-snow 10.6, which features Sten dropping gentle repeated guitar notes among the piano flakes (the sort of thing he has been doing with Susanna in their recent live performances). Indeed, such is the dominance of the trumpet that a newcomer to the band could think this was an Arve solo record, rather than the tenth release by a group of equals. There are two obvious addenda to that last sentence. Firstly, the fragile frameworks that Sten and Storløkken have created seem to have coaxed some of the most thoughtful performances to date out of Arve, bringing his beautiful breathy tone to bear on some simple, sad-sounding phrases in entirely unshowy fashion. Secondly, there are a number of interludes which, while not sounding quite like classic Supersilent, have a very different feel to the aforementioned material. 10.2 and 10.5 are strange and alien-sounding, full of ringing organ drones and deep, fuzzy distortion, not so much disrupting the flow as recontextualising it. This is no cool jazz album, far from it. It is, and could only be, the work of Supersilent.
Supersilent 10 is out now, as is the vinyl-only Supersilent 11, which I’m yet to hear. Both are available from Rune Grammofon.
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