Bengt Nordstrom in Terrific Form

The late Swedish tenor-clarinetist Bengt Frippe Nordstrom was an interesting stylist in the free zone. We covered an Ayler download release of his music earlier in the year, and I mentioned that, while that release had lots of interesting moments, there were other releases that were more definitive representations of his music.

Today we take a look at one of them. Frippe (Ayler) (2-CDs) documents his Environmental Control Office group at a Swedish club in 1988. It turns out that this was the last recording of the band and it's a good one.

Bjorn Alke and Peeter Uuskyla, bass and drums respectively, have a good loose togetherness throughout, whether it's a matter of swingtime, freetime, or a kind of rock beat feel. Lars Svanteson's violin playing has a post-Ornette outness that gives a nice timbral contrast to what Bengt is doing. Lars makes a worthy contribution to the direction and content of the solid block of improvisation over the course of the CD set.

Nordstrom puts in a very nice set of performances. He solos at length on tenor showing the eccentrically wide Albert vibrato in phrases that are short and explosive. On clarinet he sounds rather unique. Either way though his manner of melodic contouring shows an affinity with middle-period Don Cherry. There are fragments of folk and classical melodies taken up and discarded at will. There is a multi-keyed diatonic humming-to-yourself sort of stream of consciousness to his playing, spiked by outside eruptions.

Fripp hangs together from the first strains to the last. It gives solid and quite absorbing evidence of the importance of Nordstrom in the Swedish free music scene. And it's good listening.

Bengt Frippe Nordstrom, Swedish Improviser of Note

The world is filled with good improvisers, though your local late-night newscast probably does not find them newsworthy. That is their loss, but you probably could say that about just about everything worth covering. I speak of commercial American television.

One such example of a very good improviser that gets less attention, at least over here, is the late Swedish reedist Bengt Frippe Nordstrom, who passed from this earth a number of years ago, but lives on in his recordings. Today we look at one recording that is probably not at the top of his discography, but not uninteresting nonetheless.

Frippe's Protocol: The Environmental Control Office, Volume 2 (Ayler Download Series) pits Nordstrom with his long-standing trio of Bjorn Alke, acoustic bass, piano, and Peeter Uuskyla, drums. It was recorded at Norrkoping, Sweden's Museum of Modern Art in 1987. As the liner notes to the release admit, this is not a super high-quality recording. It was recorded to document the session and, while clear, is not ravishing.

By any standard this is not a major Nordstrom release--for that you might browse through the other Nordstrom offerings on Ayler Records. That does not mean it is an easily dismissed release. The group spontaneously. . .well not exactly combusts, but they do pack some gunpowder.

In the course of the more or less hour-long program, covering freely executed numbers that vary from a Swedish folk inflection to "Now's the Time," the trio shows their tight-knit unity in their loose-knit way of going at it. Nordstrom's team mates are double-jointed, they are quite limber and constitute ideal fellow-travelers into the world of the freely improvised collective. Nordstrom has real flair and that comes out on these tracks. On tenor sax, he shows a debt to Albert Ayler in his vibrato, his speech-like utterances and melodic blasts; on clarinet he doesn't especially sound like anybody.

This gives us one more Nordstrom, and for those who look for it, one cannot go wrong here. It is not indispensable. Look to earlier Ayler releases for a jumpstart on that. The music has charm, though. For the Nordstrom fan, certainly, this is a welcome addition. And it's at a good price. Go to ayler.com for info.