In-House Science is a concert recording by the trio of Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, Scottish tenor saxophonist Tommy Smith and Italian drummer Paolo Vinaccia, taped in Austria in 2016 and issued by ECM in 2018. It is the group's third album for the label, after Live At Belleville (2008) and Mira (2014), and its second made on stage. Six Andersen compositions, played by a band that had been touring together for about a decade, catch the trio at full strength, in the setting where it has always sounded most like itself.
The concert took place on 29 September 2016 at the PKS Villa Rothstein in Bad Ischl, hosted by the local association Jazzfreunde Bad Ischl. It was recorded by the Austrian broadcaster ORF for Radio Österreich 1, with Michael Radanovics as recording producer and Alois Hummer as engineer. Andersen then mixed and mastered the tapes with Jan Erik Kongshaug. The roles are simple on paper, double bass, tenor and drums, but Andersen also uses electronics and a looping echo device, which gives the trio a second, orchestral register.
The set moves between two poles. Science and the closing In-House, the two pieces that give the album its title, are open trio workouts over a fast pulse, Andersen's walking line pushing Smith into long, increasingly heated choruses while Vinaccia drives from the cymbals. North Of The Northwind goes the other way: Andersen builds a slow, resonant backdrop with his Echoplex, and Smith's tenor moves slowly across it. Venice frames a passage of quick bebop exchanges with a folk-like melody, and includes an Andersen solo over a loop, while Blussy settles into a funky strut.
The reviews in Britain and the United States were warm. In DownBeat in 2018, Andy Hermann wrote that "few trios, even after a decade together, can build a musical landscape this dramatic and richly detailed." Rob Adams in The Herald noted how "Smith slips between plaintive, soulful vulnerability and raw, angular feistiness." Hermann also recalled that Live At Belleville had helped Andersen win the Prix du Musicien Européen from the Académie du Jazz in 2008. Vinaccia died in Oslo in July 2019, which gives this concert a particular weight in the trio's small discography.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2594, first released on 23 March 2018.
