meir skrift om rørsle

The category „Norwegian Ethno-Jazz“ would describe the music of Karl Seglem only superficially and inadequately. It is not his goal to bring in folkloric traditions as a basis for new improvisations or to dress them into a more modern garment by improvisations. Also his focus is not on exploring the rhythmic and harmonic possibilities of certain instruments or curious line ups. Where this happens it does so rather as secondary results of his elementary quest. And this seems to concentrate on sound, on tone, on essence. The vibrations he creates with an instrument or with an electronic device or with a combination of both, don’t serve him as a means to an end or as a carrier of a message, they are much rather the point and the message themselves. This easily leads offside, I know, sometimes even without bad intention into pure charlatanism. That way quite a few have outwitted themselves in the past. But also on his new album Seglem moves unflustered and secure on this thin ice, even though he got even a little more daring than before. The Hardanger fiddle and the ram’s horn, besides his tenor saxophone the trade marks of his music, are not (only) applied as really played instruments anymore but find their ways into his sound paintings as digitalized essences. And dangerous as it may be: From Seglem no pseudo-mythical, undulating sound clouds bereft of meaning are emerging, no flying synthetic carpets without weight-baring capacity. With him you hear the ground on which he is firmly standing, the green that’s growing from it, the water of the fjord by which he grew up and the heartbeat of a man of flesh and blood. Everything quite earthly and honest, just with a spell of sound cast over it – like music should!

Mojo Mendiola
http://www.global-mojo.com/index.htm