Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick makes his ECM debut as a leader with this set, which features keyboardist Jon Balke and a guest appearance from Stian Carstensen - usually an accordionist, but here playing that jazz-band rarity, the pedal-steel guitar. Eick (who also plays vibes and guitar) has played with everybody from the pioneering Trygve Seim collective to Chick Corea, psychedelic group Motorpsycho and contemporary jazz-rock band Jaga Jazzist. His silky, unbrasslike sound is ideally suited to this undulating groove-landscape, and pianist Balke's apposite fills and asides help give the music a collective fluency. But there's more angularity in the rough offbeats and low keyboard grunts under Eick's airy lines on the funky Stavanger, the stately Cologne Blues is like a slowed-down Carla Bley piece (with Carstensen's steel guitar shimmering beneath it, and a probing Balke solo), and there's a folk song lilt to the mid-tempo Williamsburg. A lot of it is slow tone-poetry, but Eick's rather mournful, puffs-of-air sound is pretty captivating.
Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick opts for a different approach on Midwest. Four years after the song-like Skala, his sophomore ECM date that has attained "classic" status in European critical circles, he employs notions of history, folk tradition, and dislocation. This album was inspired by Eick's time spent playing the American continent; his tour began on the West Coast. When he entered the rural, upper Midwest and encountered its vast open spaces, he began to feel a sense of "home." He later learned that over the past two centuries of immigration, over a million Norwegians had settled there. After conceiving a "road" album that would begin in Hem, the village of his birth, and traverse the ocean to America, Eick enlisted violinist Gjermund Larsen (a folk musician who has contributed to Christian Wallumrød's ECM recordings), pianist Jon Balke, double bassist Mats Eilertsen, and percussionist Helge Norbakken. The compositions are all lyrical, in typical Eick fashion, but with Larsen they take on a rougher, more earthen quality.
Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick’s expressive playing, which according to the New York Times radiates a “pristine yet penetrating tone”, is remarkably well complemented in the company of his gifted supporting players and fellow travelers. Violinist Håkon Aase, one of the outstanding improvisers of his generation, shadows the leader with lines that reflect a profound background in folk as well as jazz. Drummers Helge Andeas Norbakken and Torstein Lofthus mirror their exchanges, as they interact with purring precision. Near the centre of the action, pianist Andras Ulvo and bass guitarist Audun Erlien ferry ideas between frontline and rhythm section and make statements of their own. On several tracks, the delicate swell of Stian Carstensen’s pedal steel guitar adds a dimension of mystery. When we leave was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in August 2020.
One of the pleasures of Mathias Eick s Midwest album was hearing his vaulting trumpet supported by violin, an instrumental combination further developed on Ravensburg. The new violinist in Eicks ensemble is Hakon Aase, one of the up-and-coming players of the new Norwegian scene, whom attentive ECM listeners will already know from his work with Thomas Stronens group. The core Eick road band is further shored up by the addition of Helge Andreas Norbakken, who interacts excitingly with fellow drummer Torstein Lofthus. Eick is in great form as a writer on this showing, deploying driving rhythm at the bottom end of his music and soaring melody at the top in this series of pieces which add up to a kind of collective family portrait. Ravensburg was recorded at Oslos Rainbow Studio in June 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher, and is issued on the eve of European tour.