Møster!
Inner Earth
Hubro

Tenor saxophone player Kjetil Møster has grabbed some different players on this new album (well, it is a few months old, as it was released in September). The quartet Møster!'s critically acclaimed album from last year, was entitled Edvard Lygre Møster. At the time of this (debut) album, his label Hubro said that Møster '...is fronting a dream team of Norwegian musicians'. The band was formed when Kjetil Møster was invited to the Kongsberg Jazz festival four years ago. This marked Møster's return to jazz, after several years of (amongst other things) flirtation with electro-rock outfit Datarock. Last year's record housed some highbrow musicians: keyboard-player Ståle Storløkken (of Supersilent, Elephant9, as well as a line of bands/artists he's been recording/performing for/with); bass player Nikolai H. Eilertsen (of Elephant 9 and Big Bang); drummer Kenneth Kapstad (of Motorpsycho fame). This year, Storløkken has skipped team Møster!. The new line-up for this album, includes Motorpsycho's Hans Magnus 'Snah' Ryan (guitars).

Inner Earth is some heavy tour/ride through, or into volcanoes. This is almost like being the soundtrack for descending inside volcanoes. The first four tracks of this album are entitled: "Descending Into This Crater I: Poutanian Debate", "Descending Into This Crater II: Central Sunrise", "Descending Into This Crater III: Magma Movement", and "Descending Into This Crater IV: Mount Vesuvio". The 14 minutes long (+) "Tearatorn" is where the band almost explode, or take off up in the air. This song, and several other passages on Inner Earth, take off into wild, dark rock/jazz (or jazz/rock) terrain, and into spastic and heavy prog-rock (and prog-jazz) directions. The band's idea/master plan (their musical idiom) was something like creating/performing 'energetic, rock-inspired and dark'. They for sure do so, as well as going off to somewhere near where the ghost of John Coltrane roam. Møster's goal (with the Møster! project) is '...to place the artistic style and intensity of [Møster's] hero, John Coltrane in a modern context'. They do that well, as the band's drifting away to exciting places: in Coltrania, as well as Progrockistan. They operate in a time capsule/time machine trembles between the 1960s and the 1970s. The untamed demon-child "Tearatorn" fades ['Teratorns, means: 'monster bird', are an extinct group of very large birds of prey that lived in North and South America from the Miocene to Pleistocene epochs - which means: from 23.03 to 5.332 million years ago, to about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago... They include some of the largest known flying birds...' - wikipedia], and the somewhat more quietly playful "Underworld Risk" appears (being less than 8 minutes long...). The end is near, and the closing of the album happens as wild (or even wilder) as the record starts. However, the craze is controlled, and it is almost as if the wild disappears into the wilderness.

Inner Earth is for sure a neat ride, which will leave you sweaty and exhausted. Being inside Earth can be both breathtaking, feverish and serving you a delirium. Take the Risk.

Copyright © 2014 Håvard Oppøyen