Rasmus Borg, Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø

2014 release **

"The three pieces presented by Borg (piano) and Nørstebø (trombone) are spellbinding explorations of the low tone. Three pieces but they segue into one another effortlessly and, with the possible exception of slight variation in pitch (and I'm not even sure of that) are pretty much indistinguishable from each other unless I missing some subtle pattern shift. The sounds are all low and sustained--bottom of the keyboard piano and extremely low trombone (the disc says, simply, "trombone", though it sounds like, at least, a bass trombone to me). The trombone tones aren't quite Malfatti-pure; sometimes they begin with a slight growl, others with a half-step upswing, but they're routinely very rich and luscious. Sometimes, the pair start a phrase more or less in unison, usually with a slightly staggered entry, but often enough one or the other enters an existing line, melding in, playing a pitch very close to that of his partner. It's a very round sound, globular even, suspended among the near-silences. Listened to closely, you can pick up ambient noise, little clicks, bumps and the like, small but for me important in surrounding the music with a kind of sheath, giving substance to the air in the studio. It's difficult to say much more than that. The pieces don't really have a monolithic quality, but they're all rather (beautifully) self-similar, more like an underground seam, coal perhaps."