Geir Sundstøl - Brødløs

2019

Ambient goes country and David Bowie and Brian Eno share a tune with John Coltrane in slide guitar maestro Geir Sundstol’s astonishing cinematic travelogue.
 
Tumbleweed blows across the widescreen desert vistas of a curiously Nordic western landscape; the melancholy-sounding scrape of a metal slide on bare steel wire is set to the same, slow, clip-clopping equestrian rhythms we hear in horse-drawn cultures from Texas to Outer Mongolia; what seem at first to be familiar musical textures drawn from ambient music, country rock or jazz are made strange through their juxtaposition with oddly clashing elements taken from totally different registers: Indian tabla drums with Mini-Moog, say, or the gated thwack and hiss of Eighties power-ballad drums next to an avant-garde electronic shimmer or Sneaky Pete-style pedal steel. It’s a fascinating place where ‘Paris, Texas’ might meet ‘Tubular Bells’, Ennio Morricone can rub shoulders with Brian Eno, and David Bowie really does run into John Coltrane. This is ‘Brødløs’, the third solo album by the Norwegian composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Geir Sundstøl.

Erland Dahlen: drums, drum machine, frame drum, steel drum, log drum, marching toms, xylophones, dulcimer, musical saw, Schulmerich handbells, blossombells, triangle, metal plates, and vocals
 
David Wallumrød: Minimoog, Prophet 5, Arp Pro Soloist and Juno 60
 
Sanskriti Sheresta: tablas and vocals
 
Mats Eilertsen: acoustic bass and vocals
 
Jo Berger Myhre: Fender VI and Moog Minitaur
 
Nils Petter Molvær: trumpet
 
Geir Sundstøl: pedal steel, National duolian, Shankar guitar, six string bass, timpani, optigan, harmonica, cümbüs, guitar banjo, mandolin, Prime Time loops, Lexicon organ, Moog Minitaur, marxophone and pianochordia.