Hedvig Mollestad Trio - "Enfant Terrible"

Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke is a certified fan and it´s easy to see why.

Double-tracked with a ghostly haze of background fuzz, Hedvig Mollestad’s lightning-rod guitar blazes a trail that comes in the wake of the heaviest guitar giants – there’s Hendrix and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi and Led Zep’s Jimmy Page swirling around the cauldron, but also the exploratory, disciplined freeplay of Pete Cosey, John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana buzzing out of her fingertips.

Together with drummer Ivar Loe Bjørnstad and bassist Ellen Brekken, her Trio capture the full force of heavy rock and electric jazz and turn it to demonic purposes. It can be sledgehammer sludge, stoned to a crawl as on ‘Arigato, Bitch’. Or it’s nimble as a phantom on ‘Rastapopoulos’, a dizzying churn that’s named after the archvillain of Hergé’s Tintin cartoons. And for the Mollestad Trio at its intuitive, ESP-connected finest, check ‘Liquid Bridges’.