By Matty Bannond
Seconds can slip past unnoticed, stacking up into minutes. Then come hours,
days, weeks. But where did the time go? Oh, how you’ve grown! Why, it
seems like only yesterday… That’s the sensation of each improvised
segment on this album from trumpeter Lina Allemano and her Berlin-based
trio, plus guest. It’s a record in constant but barely perceptible flux.
Ohrenschmaus is an international group, with Norwegian bassist Dan Peter
Sundland and German drummer Michael Griener joining their Canadian leader.
Flip Side is the trio’s second release following their 2020 debut
Rats and Mice (review
here
). It also adds Andrea Parkins on three tracks. She carried an accordion,
electronic effects and some unspecified objects all the way from the USA.
The first track, called “Sidetrack”, awakens with rusted joints and creaky
cogwheels. It’s a nine-minute journey around a pre-dawn metropolis that’s
slowly whirring into action. A million machinations scratch and shudder
until Allemano announces her arrival with long-tone calls. More sounds
rise, competing for attention and causing the atmosphere to thicken.
“The Line” is probably the most thoroughly composed piece on the album and
it features an abrupt shift of mood that stands in contrast to the rest of
the record. A short passage leaves Allemano alone in the heart of the
music, before drums and bass return for an improvised section with an
untypically hectic feeling.
Allemano’s trumpet sound is clear and concentrated, but she plays with more
fizz and soft edges on “Stricken”. It’s the most moving piece on the
album. Sundland uses the bow on his bass for a while. It’s a mournful track
with a heavier emotional weight despite its lower mass of tonal material.
Flip Side is a many-sided release that changes shape subtly, but
constantly. Lina Allemano has extensive classical training and commands a
striking variety of extended techniques, which she combines to create
infinite fluctuations and mutations on this small-group record. The forty
minutes and twenty-one seconds slip past like a half-remembered daydream.
The album is available on CD and as a digital download here.
You can read another review of Flip Side on Free Jazz
Collective here
.