Karin Krog - Fyra
The histories of jazz and freely improvised music are networks of cross-pollination, collaboration, and unexpected conjunctions. The artifacts that they have left behind represent a significant field of sonic archeology, revealing countless figures of creative significance that have lingered within the shadows of more prominent names. Geography and timing always have a place in the way that narratives are formed. Given the significant contributions that flowered from Chicago, New York, Paris, and Germany at large, artists from Scandinavia have rarely gotten the mention they deserve, despite being one of the global hotbeds of jazz and freely improvised music since the idioms began, playing host to visionary artists like Don Cherry, as well as indigenous figures like John Tchicai, Bengt Nordström, Bengt Berger, Sven-Åke Johansson, Johan Berthling, Mats Gustafsson, Lisa Ullén, Anna Högberg, and a host of others. In recent years, the long-standing Swedish imprint, Caprice, has joined forces with the curatorial vision of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Roger Bergner of the Centre for Swedish Folk Music & Jazz Research, producing the truly incredible Öppet series, focusing on under-celebrated Scandinavian creative, experimental music from the 1960s and 70s. Working with profound care at the slow and meticulous pace that initiatives like this deserve, they've delivered only a record a year since launching in 2023: so far, LPs dedicated to the work of Nisse Sandström Group, Lars-Göran Ulander, and Roland Keijser Kvartett, each of which have been as revelatory as the next. Now they're back with 2026's drop and the fourth installment in the series, Fyra, dedicated to the Norwegian vocalist Karin Krog. While little known beyond small circles of connoisseurs and deep diggers, across the 1960s and 70s Krog worked at the centre of the context of radical music that bridged both sides of the Atlantic, working with the likes of Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp and John Surman, among others, as well as making a singular body of experimental work, inspired by the innovations of John Cage and Arne Nordheim, processing her vocals with electronics. Fyra, Öppet number four, gathers two revelatory and previously unreleased bodies of recordings made in 1970 at the studios of the North German radio and television broadcaster, NDR, the first featuring Krog working in a septet alongside Lars-Göran Ulander on alto sax & flute, Calle Neumann on alto sax & flute, Berndt Egerbladh on piano & organ, Terje Rypdal on electric guitar, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass, and Sten Öberg on drums, while the second comprises stunning duos between Krog, on vocals & electronics, and the legendary Swiss percussionist and drummer Pierre Favre. Profoundly beautiful, while doubling as a crucial elevation of Krog's remarkable musical contribution into the broader consciousness, this amazing fourth volume of the Öppet series is issued by Caprice in a stunning vinyl edition, complete with extensive liner notes by both Mats Gustafsson and Krog. Dancing in the ears and challenging the mind, it's as important as historical documents come.
Born into a musical family in Oslo during 1937, Karin Krog began making waves as a vocalist while still in her teens, performing in jam sessions, before being hired by the pianist Kjell Karlsen to sing in his sextet in 1955. Three years later, she married the prominent jazz disk jockey, Johs Bergh, through whom she met and befriended traveling musicians like Cecil Taylor, Lucky Thompson, Dexter Gordon, Red Mitchell, and Don Ellis, many of whom she would develop lasting collaborative relationships with, alongside artists like Archie Shepp, Paul Bley, Steve Kuhn, Ørsted Pedersen, Terje Rypdal, Bengt Hallberg, and eventually her long term partner the British saxophonist John Surman. Unlike many artists who tend to fall under the gaze of archival treatment these days, Krog has never been particularly obscure. As she emerged into the 1960s, over the coming decades she would position herself as a singular vocalist within a narrow field that included luminaries like Jeanne Lee, Linda Sharrock, Maggie Nicols, Iqua Colson, Adele Sebastian, Linda Hill, and Patty Waters, producing dozens of releases on prominent imprints, including Philips, Sonet, MPS, Enja, Polydor, Compendium, RCA, and others, many of which are jointly billed with her luminous collaborators. That said, arguably the strongest, most beloved entry in her catalog is the wildly experimental free Different Days Different Ways, featuring her as bandleader, rendering fierce vocals, recorded between 1972 and 1974, before being released in Japan in 1976. It is straight into the beginnings of this thrilling period in Krog's practice that Fyra delivers the ear, having been recorded in 1970 at the studios of the North German radio and television broadcaster, NDR, and only now excavated and released for the very first time.
Comprising seven tracks in total, the first four finding Krog working at the center of an ensemble featuring Lars-Göran Ulander, Calle Neumann, Berndt Egerbladh, Terje Rypdal, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and Sten Öberg - an unbeatable line-up of creative Scandinavian musicians rendering music penned by Egerbladh - while the remaining three encounter her locked in an intimate, real-time dialog with Pierre Favre, Fyra immediately stands out as a raw illumination of the power that the vocalist delivered into the scene of freely improvised music at the time.
Opening with the reasonably long-form track, Arcticness, the group settles into languid, medium paced pulses and grooves, flirting at the borders of post-bop and spiritual jazz, leaving plenty of space for Krog's brilliant interventions, treating her voice like an instrument rather than a means to deliver lyrical meaning. From here the group moves into increasingly fascinating waters, shifting between more out, experimental passages and a remarkable rethinking of what more traditional forms of vocal jazz can be when faced with degrees of abstraction, fully taking off on the second side into some seriously brilliant free jazz fire, bookended by slow paced balladic moments. Feeling both timeless and entirely of its moment, as Krog's sessions at NDR with this brilliant septet close, we're immediately faced with what are arguably Fyra's most stand-out statements and true reveal into Krog's fantastically ambitious mind as she enters into a duo with the legendary Swiss percussionist and drummer Pierre Favre, live processing her vocals with electronics over three mind-blowing tracks. Stripped back to the minimal of means, Favre's delicate clatter on percussion met with bubbling phonics and momentary poetics from Krog, at each turn and evolution the pair are locked in, immersed in a knotted web of sonority that remains engrossing and strikingly contemporary, more than 50 years since it was laid to tape.
As we stated at the outset, like all that the Öppet series has offered its artists so far, Fyra is a top to bottom revelation that stands as a much needed elevation of Krog's remarkable musical contribution into the broader consciousness. Creatively brilliant and thrilling, while encompassing a vast range of approaches across its two sides, it's an absolute killer that has kept us coming back again and again. Issued by Caprice in a stunning vinyl edition, complete with extensive liner notes by both Mats Gustafsson and Krog - offering an immersive journey in their own right - Öppet has done it again and totally blown us away.