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Terje Rypdal

Vossabrygg

ECM 987 5381

The title of this album, which translates as 'Vossa Brew', refers to the fact that the music it contains, commissioned by and recorded at Norway's Vossa Jazz Festival, is inspired by Miles Davis's seminal 1969 recording Bitches Brew.

Its personnel, too, has Milesian connections: trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg (composer of the 1984 Davis big-band tribute Aura) combines throughout with leader/composer Terje Rypdal in a manner strongly reminiscent of 1970s Davis trumpet/guitar collaborations, and the opening 18-minute track 'Ghostdancing' in particular is a heady brew of clunky Fender, woozy Hammond and Bjorn Kjellemyr's squirting bass.

This said, Vossabrygg is also quintessentially Scandinavian, typically Rypal: the presence of keyboard players Bugge Wesseltoft and Stile Storlkken, not to mention ECM stalwarts, drummers Jon Christensen and Paolo Vinaccia, ensure the former; the continual emergence of ethereal but strident guitar from the soup of synthesised sound, plus the linking passages compiled by Marius Rypdal from his father's previous recordings, ensures the latter.

The music, ranging from the above-mentioned Milesian/Zawinul-influenced electro-jazz through to more contemporary sampling and turntable sounds, although in many ways a state-of-the-art 21st-century product, also underlines just how enduringly influential Davis's 1970s music is.