Pinball Marius Neset with Ivo Neame

• 1 World Song, Pt. 1 08:43
• 2 World Song, Pt. 2 06:25
• 3 Pinball 06:51
• 4 Odes of You 06:53
• 5 Police 06:10
• 6 Music for Cello and Saxophone 03:18
• 7 Theatre of Magic 06:26
• 8 Aberhonddu 03:34
• 9 Jaguar 02:54
• 10 Music for Drums and Saxophone 02:20
• 11 Summer Dance 05:59
• 12 Hymn from the World 01:45
• Total Runtime 01:01:18

Info for Pinball

Artists prize certain recording studios as much as they do producers or players. The room that adequately captures sound and provides optimal conditions for musicians working at the highest creative level is much in demand, and in some instances it is the location that can be something of a game changer. A studio in an unusual place with a unique ambience or history can greatly affect the act of making music.

Ocean Sound Recordings is a case in point. Built on the Norwegian island of Giske, it wears its name well, offering those who come to blow horns, strike keys or beat drums a grandiose view of the Atlantic.

It was here that Marius Neset, the 29 year-old Norwegian saxophone prodigy who has made major waves on the European jazz scene in the past three years following the release of the lavishly acclaimed albums, 2011’s Golden Explosion, 2013’s Birds and 2014’s Lion, a collaboration with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, spent five days with his band in the spring of 2014. The experience has hardly ebbed from his mind. “The studio is in a big house, and the musicians who use it, get to live on the second floor,” Neset explains. “It’s the most amazing feeling to be in this space where you’re surrounded by nature. We all worked from early morning until late night but you’re aware of this unique environment all the time. I mean it’s just two minutes walk from the studio to the beach, so it was a very special place to make music.”

Pinball, the fruit of those endeavours, is arguably the strongest artistic statement Neset has made to date insofar as it acts as a dual showcase for his gifts as an improviser and composer. It also unveils an international band where the whole is greater than the sum of the not inconsiderable parts. The long-running creative relationship between the players has no doubt been a major contributory factor to this cohesion. Norwegian drummer Anton Eger, who also co-produced the album, is a long-term associate of Neset’s, having worked with him on Golden Explosion and Birds. The two musicians previously lined up with the Swedish double bassist Petter Eldh in People Are Machines. Furthermore, Eger gigs regularly with pianist Ivo Neame in the highly successful trio Phronesis, so Neset’s core rhythm section hardly comprises strangers washing up on an unknown musical shore. As for vibraphonist Jim Hart he has been playing with Neame for many years.

Neset was more than happy to dive head first into this talent pool. “It felt really good to be right in the middle of a band again. I loved doing the project with the Trondheim Orchestra, but that was more about composing and arranging. This is my group. I love being right in the middle of the music. I’m playing much more here and that’s what I really I love to do. But they're great to play with, so it makes sense.” This move back into a soloist spotlight is a timely reminder of why the jazz world pricked up its ears when Neset emerged several years ago. His virtuosity, from the bedrock strength of tone to the torrents of phrasal ideas, extends a rich lineage of sax giants that runs from Chris Potter to Michael Brecker back to one of their key role models, Joe Henderson, but also references the more serene ways of Jan Garbarek. While Neset’s improvising has lost none of its cascading verve his new compositions mark a considerable shift compared to previous material.

Rhythmically and harmonically, there are constant flashes of the multi-layered vocabulary of the pioneers who bridge jazz and non-western folk music, namely Hermeto Pascoal, Joe Zawinul or Trilok Gurtu, above all in collaboration with the aforesaid Garbarek. Yet there is a distinct digital age slant to the groove, a kind of sharply quantized jitter that offsets the lyricism of many of the themes. This flows from Neset’s key aim: the clarity of the song amid all the choppy percussive action. “I think the focus is on strong melody compared to my other work, though the music is still complex. There are still difficult polyrhythms and challenging harmony, but I think that the melody is kind of holding things together. You know, I was able to sing them a lot myself. So at times the music can be complex and almost a bit chaotic, but there is a melody, sometimes a simple thing, really, that keeps it all together.

“Pinball is about the fact that anything can happen in the music. We have to react to each other and to ideas in the moment, and that’s what I love about jazz. That’s what keeps it fresh. Golden Explosion and Birds were both albums that were planned as suites, but Pinball is more like a set of songs where every piece can really just stand on its own.” Each of the twelve tracks does indeed have a sense of individual life cycle, which is effectively served by production from Neset and Eger that entailed a considerable amount of work both before and after the studio sessions. The comprehensive involvement of the two players in the recording process has lent the album an identity and character every bit as distinctive as a triangle of earth in a great circle of water.

Marius Neset, tenor and soprano saxophones
Ivo Neame, piano, Hammond B3 organ, CP 80, clavinet
Jim Hart, vibraphone and marimba
Petter Eldh, double bass
Anton Eger, drums and percussion
Additional musicians:
Andreas Brantelid, cello (on track 1, 2, 6 and 7)
Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violin (on track 1 and 11)
Ingrid Neset, flute (on track 1, 5 and 11)
August Wanngren, tambourine (on track 3)

Recorded by Henning Vatne Svoren at Ocean Sound Recordings, 30th June - 2nd July 2014
Mixed by August Wanngren at We Know Music Studios
Mastered by Thomas Eberger at Stockholm Mastering
Produced by Marius Neset and Anton Eger

Marius Neset
was born in 1985, in Bergen, a sleepy Norwegian harbour town that’s home to the internationally renowned Nattjazz Festival (Neset won the Talent Award there in 2004). Besides his love of jazz in its widest sense, the saxophonist-composer also grew up listening to bands from the so-called ‘Bergen wave’ of post-rock such as Royksopp (and from there on to Radiohead) through to the great classical composer of his hometown Edvard Grieg as well as more contemporary art music. “I love being in the mountains, and silence is a music as well. Maybe it’s because I’m from Norway I feel this,” he says. It accounts for the huge diversity and fluidity of movement between different elements of so-called genres that’s been a key characteristic of Marius Neset’s music to date.

When only 5 years old, before taking up the sax, he took lessons on drums and this has had a significant impact on his approach to composition in particular. “I think the drums gave me a rhythmic base that was very important. I learnt very young to play in these odd meters so I think I have a very natural feel for it,” he says. Neset, in live performance, also has the uncanny ability of making one saxophone sound like two or three.

In 2003 Neset moved to Copenhagen to study at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory. The great English pianist and large ensemble arranger Django Bates was professor there at the time and became Neset’s mentor. The saxophonist went on to become the star turn in Bates’ student big band StoRMchaser recording a CD Spring is Here (Shall we Dance?) in 2008. Meanwhile Neset also released his debut Suite for the Seven Mountains that year on the Danish Calibrated label. Besides a string quartet, it featured the Swedish drummer Anton Eger, who alongside Neset was also a leading member of Scandi-fusion boy band JazzKamikaze. In 2010 Django Bates took him to London to play at a concert at Kings Place marking his 50th birthday. Neset also appeared as a guest in Django Bates’ long time ensemble Human Chain at the famous Ronnie Scott’s club. Recorded by BBC Jazz on 3 he wowed the audience with his contrast of lightening virtuosity and tender, ethereal lyricism. One of those blown away was Dave Stapleton head of the fast emerging UK independent jazz label Edition Records.

Edition signed Neset to the label in 2011. GoldenXplosion, featuring a quartet that included Django on keys and the Scandi-Brit trio Phronesis’ rhythm section of Jasper Hoiby and Eger, was released to glowing press reviews with The Guardian writer John Fordham accurately predicting Neset would be, “on his way to being one of the biggest new draws on the circuit”. By the time of his second CD on Edition Birds in 2012, Neset had started developing his penchant for larger ensemble music and a widescreen palette of instrumental sound.

Still only 29 years of age, Neset is successfully hitting the international stage, and being talked about as a big tenor in a lineage that extends from the post-bop Americans from Michael Brecker, Chris Potter through to fellow Norwegian Jan Garbarek. But there’s a lot more to one of Europe’s brightest young stars than that. “I’m very inspired by people like Frank Zappa, Django Bates, Pat Metheny and Wayne Shorter where the music and the playing is one,” he has said. Neset’s classy, cohesive composition and arranging skills have come into even sharper focus with a new album Lion released in 2014, his debut for the Munich-based ACT, one of Europe’s leading jazz labels, in a collaboration with the celebrated Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, whose former collaborations have boasted the likes of Chick Corea and Pat Metheny. It was originally a commission to compose for the 13-piece orchestra (in a lineup that includes tuba player Daniel Herskedal, a fellow student at RMC who together released an impressive duo album Neck of the Woods in 2012.) for a concert at the 2012 Molde Jazz Festival. “After the premiere in Molde, these compositions felt so special that we decided to record this album and play many more concerts with it,” he says.

Booklet for Pinball