Mats Gustafsson & Joachim Nordwall - Their Power Reached Across Space And Time- To Defy Them Was Death-Or Worse

Those who are acclimatised to Gustafsson's usual blistering horn-driven wig-outs and rock-indebted swing might need to readjust their settings for this broody slow-motion stew. With old sparring partner and fellow Swede Joachim Nordwall, he's brokered here a trawl through decidedly alien atmospheres rife with sci-fi author Cordwainer Smith's otherworldly influence.

Prurient slurps and gurgles formulate a subterranean glossolalia during ‘Love Shows In Her Smile: It Is Confident (Panik)’, while elsewhere Gustafsson sounds like an extra-terrestrial sealion filtering down a Büchner funnel. The saxophonist fleetingly takes to more customary terrain on ‘His Fingers, Moving In The Air, Produced A Soft Organ-Like Music (Långtråkigt)’, coding in distressed pockets of bestial parp before launching into an incendiary invective across Nordwall's bursts of electronic cluster-bomb ordinance. But, for the most part, this absorbing album deviates from the usual free-jazz slanging matches, its intrepid adventures luxuriating in unhurried mutations born of deep-listening, communication and a whole lotta patience.

https://www.jazzwise.com/review/mats-gustafsson-and-joachim-nordwall-their-power-reached-across-space-and-time-to-defy-them-was-death-or-worse