Review: Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Colston Hall, Bristol, 20th March 2007
I first encountered EST in a record store amongst the uncomfortable cobbles of Bath, sometime in the early OO's. I was indulging in my usual Saturday afternoon pastime of buying armfuls of records by bands I had never heard of from the bargain bucket by the entrance (and exit), when some innocuous piano tinkle that had been idling over the store speakers, drifting by barely noticed in the far reaches of my attention, hatched into a beautifully bright and intense rhythm coated in a delicate and mesmeric wheeze. I enquired (unusual in itself) and discovered this to be the climax of “Behind the Yashmak.” Replacing my obscurities like a landfill tipper-truck I invested my funds (not to mention a portion of the afternoon’s beer money) on an album called Strange Place for Snow by a Swedish Jazz band called The Esbjorn Svensson Trio. At first I found it hard to believe this was a jazz record. I could hear the basis of jazz, feel the nodding heads and the stern, intense glares of an audience, but what lay on top, across and all around this music was something more than that label could provide.
To put this purchase into context it may be an idea to etch a brief and simplistic ‘family tree’ of my musical education. It moves in overlapping strands, starting from two points - Classical music and the Beatles. Liszt and Beethoven have remained constant for me whilst from the Beatles I travelled through classic pop to “Badge” to Cream and from there, inevitably to Robert Johnson to Son House and back up to the sixties where I was shot out like a cannonball into the dowdy tenements of rock music. This eventually dribbled me out at the feet of punk and then on to the geniuses of the post punk scene such as Talking Heads and Television. Alongside this was my literary influence which very early on had me in musty smelling basement shops clasping Charlie Parker records, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, and of course, Miles Davis. The pinhead of all this, I suppose, is that man Miles Davis. Everything I was into at the time, he was doing at the other side of the fence, and with that marauding passion that I had experienced with the classical composers, the same grandiosity and pomp. I remember being a little confused to read in a Mojo poll in the mid nineties that Kind of Blue was considered the most influential jazz album of all time. Up until then I had thought it was a blues album. Likewise On the Corner, I learned, had been rejected by the Jazz community. Probably because it is an avante garde funk album, I thought. Bitched Brew was groundbreaking jazz. So groundbreaking I could not see the relation to Porgy and Bess or Sketches of Spain, but I could see Hendrix, Arthur Lee and John Cage in there, sweating and wide eyed.
This rather wide tangent comes back to serve as an explanation for my first experience of EST, for it was those same chemicals stirred by the cultural colossus that was Davis that I tasted at the back of my throat the first time I sat and listened to Strange Place for Snow. Labels could be left at the door for this gig along with your Cuban heels and goatees.
I had marked EST down as a band I was unlikely to ever catch in the flesh; a combination of their always-threadbare touring schedules in the UK and my general apathy when it comes to travelling for gigs. But this opportunity, I knew, was not to be missed. Very early on in the night I could see that it was going to be a far more credible experience to judge this band on their liver performance than it would be on their exemplary recorded documents. As a trio they are solid, polished but edgy, exciting and charismatic. A man sat in front of me smiled to his friend at one point (who, incidentally, slept through most of the gig, waking only to whoop and clap at the end of each track – I love middle class English jazz ‘fans’) and said ‘three men playing as one.’ And although I could understand his enjoyment of the gig had forced a reaction out of him, tired cliché or not, he was off the mark. Whereas you can accurately use this in reference to, say, James Brown’s backing band or Sly Stone’s Family, EST are three remarkable, individual musicians in a band that compliments each of them in turn. Each one stood strongly, depending on which one you focused, and each man’s solo was virtuoso, very little to do with cogs or wheels.
On piano Esbjorn Svensson had such a light gliding touch across the keys that it was often difficult to keep up as he tripped from a Porter-esque melody to Johnnie Johnson R&B riffs to Monk via Chopin in the briefest of episodes, sometimes nodding to each in turn sometimes mixing them up like the most delicious local dish, found only around Svensson’s mind.
Dan Berglund on Double Bass, bald and thick set, is obviously a heavyweight in his field. He was tight, often bluesy, often ferocious. With a bow he would wind great emotive lines not out of place in an Elgar piece and then would soon be raising the ghost of Hendrix with a heavy distortion, soloing as if he was holding a Strat.
Drummer Magnus Ostrom comes from that grand tradition of Jazz drummers who manage to bring you into a world of percussion that you thought was previously only home to instruments with pitch. His solos were as mesmerising as anything else this night, and his four minute tumult at the intro to “Definition of a Dog” in which he used an old honking car horn as a drumstick was one of many highlights.
It would be wrong to label this music at all, but I can appreciate those that may want to utter ‘soundscapes’ after seeing them live, and there are moments when you can hear the debt they owe to Eno and co. But stronger is the cinematic feel as you watch them and find yourself wrapped in their world. They owe as much to Morricone as they do to Davis and Monk. But overall it is a strong debt to the vast history of music that EST owe as much to their own talent and ingenuity. They play as much to show up the loopholes of musical style and categorisation as much as to show just how damn good they are in every single field they enter.
Leaving I overheard someone say it was one of the best jazz concerts they had ever sat through. Jazz was not what I heard. What I heard was music, vast and dramatic, and as chimeric as it could only be in the hands of serious and profoundly talented musicians.