- From Gagarin's Point of View
- Dodge the Dodo
- Good Morning Susie Soho
- Spam-Boo-Limbo
- Behind The Yashmak
- Viaticum
- Seven Days Of Falling
- Strange Place For Snow
- Believe, Beleft, Below
- A Picture Of Doris Traveling With Boris
- Goldwrap
- Delores In A Shoestand
- Leucocyte.
Esbjörn Svensson (piano, keyboards)
Dan Berglund (double-bass)
Magnus Öström (drums, percussion)
rec.1998-2008
Esbjörn Svensson’s death ended one of the world’s powerhouse trios,
an ensemble of equals that pursued a wide range of musical staging
posts, bolstered by imaginative exploration unconfined either by the
medium or by expectation. It was truly a great loss, not least because
the trio was working fluidly in further directions. Cut off in its
prime it nevertheless leaves behind a portfolio of great moments and
great discs. This Retrospective covers a decade’s worth of recordings,
and serves as a memorial to one of the most energising bands around.
From Gagarin's Point of View is an apt starting point; a reflective,
hypnotic free reverie: lyrical but subtle. Changes of mood and texture
(overdubbing primarily) always kept E.S.T’s timbral textures excitingly
varied. But their command of the funkier reaches of the music certainly
did them no harm, as Dodge the Dodo shows. This is classic
up-tempo E.S.T. It’s hard hitting but feelingly integrated, suffused
with rock. It’s not as visceral or as overwhelming as another powerhouse
trio, The Bad Plus, but its stake in expanding the vocabulary of the
trio ensemble is just as important.
It’s pretty undeniable that Keith Jarrett was an important influence,
and Good Morning Susie Soho attests to it strongly, to the
Jarrett of the early 1970s trios. A long track – by far the longest
on this album – such as Behind The Yashmak shows another facet
of the trio, that of a slow, cooking build–up of tension and a control
of span, of time. This one develops an inexorable drive after the
slow and rapt start, and the impeccable, incremental control of tempo
is a rare gift demonstrating the absolute interplay between the threesome.
There are gospel hints too, possibly via Jarrett who knew how to infuse
them into his own music – try Believe, Beleft, Below, a song
that also feints toward C&W cadences too. Sometimes of course
the sheer fluency and drive generated by the trio could be less than
fulfilling. A Picture Of Doris Traveling With Boris may, like
so many of their titles, exude cute wordplay, but it doesn’t display
commensurate thematic memorability. Sometimes texture won out over
ideas, as here. And, yes, that bludgeoning aspect to their music-making
could also subvert melodic or harmonic ideas, as is the case – it
seems to me – in Goldwrap. But these relative failures are
more than outweighed by the intensified lyricism that the trio drew
on. Delores In A Shoestand has an easy lyricism hard to resist.
Above all E.S.T chanced their arm. Contrapuntalism was a facet of
their music as much as their Jarrett and Pat Metheny influences. If
the lyricism had a pervasive Nordic quality it was generous and never
hooded. Their absorption of funk grooves and rock added latitude to
their rhythmic and textual armouries. Where might they have gone?
Let’s rather enjoy where they did go.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
ACT 9021-2
