#Marianne Svašek
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dustedmagazine · 23 days ago
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Vilhelm Bromander — In This Forever Unfolding Moment (Thanatosis)
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The descriptor “spiritual jazz” gets thrown around a lot these days. Not much of the stuff currently being made holds up to the large-band work of Don Cherry and Pharoah Sanders. The horns are too slick, the forms too prosaic and the efforts at incorporating contemporary elements just depressing. In This Forever Unfolding Moment, which has just been re-pressed by the Swedish label Thanatosis after the original 2023 edition went quickly out of print, is a study in how to do it right. Not only does it accurately trace the style’s requisite broad outlines, it has a rich relational and sonic depth patiently awaits discovery.
Bassist Vilhelm Bromander has been active on Sweden’s improvised and alternate tuning music scenes for about a decade. He’s played in lots of other folks’ bands, which will prove relevant in a bit, and he has led a few as well, but nothing like the Unfolding Orchestra. The 12-instrument ensemble’s complement is a veritable who’s who, encompassing current-generation free players such as tenor saxophonist Elin Forkelid and trombonist Mats Älekint, as well as veterans old enough to remember how a rotary dial phone feels under your fingertips, most notably bass clarinetist Christer Bothén, whom Don Cherry once sought out when he wanted to learn how to play the donso ngoni.  Saxophonist Martin Küchen is on hand to play a coarse, ecstatic alto solo, and violinist Katt Hernandez and pianist Alex Zethson offer provide idiomatically necessary textural plushness. This music covers a lot of ground, and all of its elements are in balance.
The Unfolding Orchestra is not just a band full of great players; it’s a band full of people who have histories with each other and Bromander, so that his prior explorations of South African and European post-bop jazz and free improvisation resonate throughout the stately, six-part horn charts and the roiling rhythmic undertow achieve by twinned drummers Anton Jonsson and Dennis Egberth. Druhpad singer Marianne Svašek, who has been Bromander’s tutor in the Indian vocal tradition, introduces the side-long title piece with an exquisitely centering passage for voice and tampura, which passes the torch to Emily Strandberg’s trumpet, which in turn ushers in the complete ensemble.
Bromander doesn’t step to the fore until the beginning of side two, when his solemnly plucked opening statement unlocks the album’s most turbulent moments on “Låt Våra Tårar Bli Våra Vapen” (“Let Our Tears Be Our Weapons”). The music’s intensity does not express energy for energy’s sake, but expresses the stormy point of an ultimately transcendental narrative. “Blommor Och Bröd” (“Flowers And Bread”) closes the album with an expression of serenity glimpsed, but not grasped. In This Forever Unfolding Moment doesn’t just get the sounds right; it projects the necessary spirit.
Bill Meyer
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