With his first solo record, Arve Henriksen proved, consciously or not,that he could step boldly away from Supersilent's authoritarian shadowand develop a style all his own. On Sakuteikithe trumpeter did more than abandon the darkly ambient, jazz-fuckedcityscapes of his father group; by limiting instrumentation to the hornalone, Henriksen created a smoky, elegant tone poem with allusions toJapanese folk and classical musics, successfully juxtaposed with thealien texturing of the day's more established avant-trumpetingtechniques (see the arid, pursed playing of Franz Hautzinger, AlexDörner etc). Sampling and layering his varying strands of breath,Henriksen establishes a dreamlike atmosphere that rarely callsattention to the extremes of his instrument as free-jazzers might.Instead the mood is more of a weary, timeless, psychedelic sort, wherepiece-by-piece his trumpet fades into the movements of a detailed,irreducible landscape, intensely colorful but never jarring. Chiaroscuro'stitle aptly warns that it will provide no rest from the abstractdream-mapping of its predecessor, but the record does show Henriksenlightening up a bit, no longer limited to his trumpet and wordlessvocal, this time adding two new musicians to his band, a percussionistand livesampling expert. These additions give Chiaroscuro a looser, live-r feeling while keeping up with Sakuteiki'spatchwork brilliance. The timeless, graying overtones of that album arelost here, but they're replaced by a feeling that the players arecoloring in spaces as they go, a lush and growing environment that isincrementally fortified as the three play off and coil within thethought-lines of each other's playing. Henriksen lets his vocal matchthe music's newer flamboyance, soaring to heights that often give hisandroid-feminine croon prominence over the brass. No doubt thetrumpeter has benefited from the new ways of hearing and accompanyinghimself afforded by Jan Bang's livesampling abilities. Bang's cuts andassemblages sound less solemn or cyclical than Henriksen's own from thefirst record, and the trumpeter responds with a buoyant playing stylethat sacrifices none of Sakuteiki's hidden drama. The resulting joyful, relaxed, even tropical feeling is enough to characterize Chiaroscuro and will distinguish the record from the artist's past work. Here is not so much the sound of Henriksen stepping out on his own as stepping forward into something new. Read More
