Knut Reiersrud Band - Anthropomorfi: Songs of Human-Animal Encounters

Knut Reiersrud returns to Jazzland with another unexpected collection of eight original songs with a unique theme: each song is written and performed to portray the personality of an animal that has come into contact with humanity, often with unfortunate consequences.

Despite the theme, it does not adhere to what one might expect from such a record. There is no moral didacticism or pontification, no preaching from a guitar-shaped pulpit. Instead, with the exception of one song - Fuglens Morgensang ("Bird's Morning Song") - Reiersrud has chosen to convey these portraits without words, allowing the music to do the talking. However, it is a sonically fierce album, comprising guitar-based R&B, jazz, rock and funk stylings performed as only Knut and his band can. The band, together since 2006, operates like a single organism, with the kind of unity that only years of collaboration and comradeship can achieve. The album was recorded live on the legendary 16-track Otari tape machine in the large Salvation Army Hall in Oslo, an aesthetic decision that lends even greater urgency to the album, as well as analogue warmth and greater immediacy.

The songs and their subjects:

Keiko - the killer whale from the movie "Free Willy" who ended his life, due to pneumonia, in Northern Norway.

Freya - The walrus that visited the Oslo fjord in the summer of 2022, until she was shot on 14 August.

Rugg - the first bear to come to the Bear Park in Flå.

Fuglens Morgensang ("Bird's Morning Song") - a greeting to the blackbird outside Reiersrud's bedroom.

Jangla - the elephant at Circus Arnardo who died of colic in 1980.

Havnesjefen ("The harbor master") - the swan who made "life and living" in North-West Norway in the summer of 2017. Shot on 2 August of the same year.

Hvaldimir - the white whale that keeps visiting the Oslo fjord. Like Keiko, it is in danger of becoming completely dependent on humans.

Rockehjulet ("The Rocking Wheel") - the place along the Drammen River where a nameless giant beluga whale was barbarically taken with 9 sticks of dynamite in 1964.