Oker - Husene Vare Er Museer [Sofa Music]

Released on April 20th, 2k18 via the Norwegian Sofa Music label is Oker's debut album "Husene Vare Er Museer", the first ever musical outing crafted and recorded by the improv-focused quartet consisting of Adrian Fiskum Myhr, Jan Martin Gismervik, Torstein Lavik Larsen and Fredrik Rasten. With an instrumentation set of bass, drums, trumpet and guitar the four musicians approach their sound off the experience of collective music making and unfold their palette over the course of seven fully acoustic tracks, opening with "Drivved", a thundering, nervous and mostly percussive affair meandering in between the borders of chaos and a fairly avantgarde take on FreeJazz before suddenly turning into an intimate, minimalist Folk tune, "Furer" explores a spine-tingling set of polyrhythmic pulses whereas "Kortbølge" amalgamates the innocence of naturalistic, folksy guitar works with a more freaky attitude brought on by various scrapings and strange respiratory sounds functioning as interrupting, irritating and obscuring element ever present through both parts of this composition which is more fever'ish, dreamlike and well psychedelic in its second half. With "Nesler" we see the quartet cater a more innocent and positive, yet abstract musical vision, "Utsyn" provides a peaceful take on Future Jazz Noir for rainy Sunday afternoons, "Soldugg" lets full on natural melancholia unfold and the final "Ekvator" fuses klaxon'esque trumpet sounds with busy background percussions, resembling a score for a timelapse of a well futuristic beehive in terms of depicting both a natural flow and life circle as well as fast-paced, antsy activity at the same time. Check!

Album artwork on Instagram!