Cakewalk ‎– Ishihara (2017) Label: Hubro ‎– HUBROCD2575 Country: Norway Genre: Jazz, Rock Style: Contemporary Jazz, Experimental 01. Monkeys 8:48 02. Shrooms 5:33 03. Dome 4:18 04. State 8:25 05. Apostrophe 3:28 06. Rebound 8:08 Drums – Ivar Loe Bjørnstad Guitar, Bass, Synth – Stephan Meidell Synth [Synths] – Øystein Skar Recorded At – Duper Studio Mixed At – Kakofon Studio Mastered At – Maskingrotten Composed By [All Songs By] – Cakewalk Design – Aslak Gurholt, Thomas Nordby, Yokoland Liner Notes [English] – Stephan Meidell Mastered By – Jørgen Træen Mixed By – Stephan Meidell Producer [Produced By] – Cakewalk Recorded By – Martin Smoge Recorded at Duper Studio, Bergen Mixed at Kakofon Studio, Bergen Mastered at Lydgrotten, Bergen ________________________________________ https://shop.klicktrack.com/musikkonline/502665 ________________________________________ There’s a certain kind of alchemy that happens when a particular group of musicians plays together that can be neither forced, manufactured, nor replicated, and the combination of Stephan Meidell (guitar, bass, synth), Øystein Skar (synths), and drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad offers ample proof by way of illustration. Regardless of how each sounds individually, they sound like no one else when Cakewalk‘s engine activates. Arriving after 2012’s Wired and 2014’s Transfixed, Ishihara is strikingly genre-less: with each member bringing a different specialization to the project, whether it be experimental, classical, or jazz-rock, every track resists any attempt to pin it down to a particular style. Bjørnstad, for example, also drums in the incredible Hedvig Mollestad Trio and brings a similar brand of muscularity to Cakewalk. “Monkeys” does, in fact, start out with synthesizers mimicking the creatures’ furious chatter before settling into a classic motorik pulse straight out of an early krautrock session, the trio’s elements coalescing into a glorious maelstrom that lunges forth with urgency and purpose. Like some spaced-out mashup of prog, industrial, turntablism, and jazz-rock, the music thunders for nine fabulous minutes, with stately synth figures soaring over a churning mass of urban noise. Echoing a typical Discipline-era Crimson-styled pulse, Bjørnstad and Meidell lock into an off-kilter groove (three bars of 6/4 and one of 5/4 by my reckoning) on “Shrooms” like it’s the most natural thing in the world, until Skar nudges it in prog’s direction with softly whistling textures suggestive of a mellotron; a similar effect occurs during “State” when three-note synth figures slather the group’s raucous rumble. For the slower “Dome,” the trio strips its sound to a skeletal core with dub bass lines anchoring doom-laden guitar chords, while “Apostrophe” opens with the disorienting dazzle of spiraling synthesizers before Meidell steps forth with guitar riffs tailor-made for some modern-day surf soundtrack. _________________________________________________________________________ The final sentence of Andre Breton’s novel of 1928, ‘Nadja’, famously reads (in the English translation by Richard Howard): “Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all”. This could be the credo, if one were needed, for the Norwegian trio Cakewalk’s third album, ‘Ishihara’, which follows the highly acclaimed ‘Wired’ (2012) and ’Transfixed’ (2014). The music seems to exist in a state of continual convulsion, repeatedly contracting and relaxing as if responding to electrical stimulus or some deep biological need. It also sounds like the past, present and future, all at the same time. Recognisable instruments – thundering drums, seismic bass, spacey synth – as played by a hard-riffing proggish post-jazz improv trio, are mashed up with the everyday noise of random urban chatter: hip-hop scratches and half-heard snatches of game-console SFX; sirens, car alarms, nameless electronic bleeps and blurps; what could be the dystopian drip-drip-drip of an underground car park. And that’s only the opening track, ‘Monkeys’. The next one, ‘Shrooms’, begins totally differently, like the sample of a brain scan. ’Apostrophe’, the penultimate piece, is delicious avant-garde ear-candy that could accompany a film or an unusually tasteful TV ad. The sound just keeps on coming, wave after wave after wave. It’s exhausting as well as exhilarating, yet dizzyingly fresh and new. There’s also something monumental about its sheer hulking massiveness; the way inchoate blocks of solid noise are carved into shape through a kind of audio-sculpture. Typically, the music functions in different time cycles simultaneously, like classical Indian ragas or the John Coltrane quartet, so that listeners can choose to focus on whatever level they wish: the skittering rhythms of the outside rim’s maximum’s BPMs, or the slower, deeper pulses that lie closer to the centre. It’s a mark of the group’s sensitivity that they give the listener sufficient freedom to select their own entry-point rather than enforcing one correct ‘reading’ through, for example, a clear demarcation between figure and ground, or back, front and middle. If the music is ‘about’ anything, it’s probably this process of how we perceive it. If you’re looking for clues, the album’s title references a famous colour perception test for red-green colour deficiencies, named after its creator, Dr Shinobu Ishihara, and first published in 1917. ‘Ishihara’ is also characterised by the variety of its contents. None of the six tracks sounds like any other, yet they sit together quite happily to form a satisfying listening whole. Similarly, the three members of Cakewalk come from relatively disparate musical backgrounds, with roots in rock, pop and classical music as well as leftfield jazz and improvisation. Øystein Skar (synths/keyboards), who has an academic background in classical composition, also plays in the pop group Highasakite and the duo Glow; drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad, part of the Oslo rock scene since 2000, performs with the great, and almost equally convulsive, Hedvig Mollestad Trio; Stephan Meidell (guitar/bass/synth), a composer who will release his own solo album on Hubro in parallel with ‘Ishihara’, plays in the duo Strings and Timpani, Erlend Apneseth Trio, Krachmacher, and previously with The Sweetest Thrill and Vanilla Riot. Perhaps it’s this broad range of backgrounds and interests that makes the three players coalesce into such an impressive unit, individual difference helping to enforce a strong and sustaining collective identity. Whatever the reason, ‘Ishihara’ presents the work of a band who, true to the spirit of improvisation, might not know where they are going, but are absolutely sure of the methods they will use to get there.