By Ferruccio Martinotti
Emerged from the Viking Cauldron of the Fire! Orchestra, Anna Högberg was
one the most exhilarating potions we’ve had the chance to swallow along the
last 10 years: two excellent records along with her group Attack (the self titled of 2016 and the sophomore, Lena, 2020) granted her fully deserved
international attention, while lateral projects such as Doglife (Fresh from
the ruins, 2017) and Se och Hor (Se mig, hor mig, kann mig, 2017)
confirmed the status of a real top-notch musician. Given that, as you surely
know, the writers of this Blog are working hard, they, like “16 Tons”
miners, dug out the 4 records as above and the concerned reviews are filed
at the disposal of the readers.
To describe Anna’s most famous patrol,
Attack, what’s better than Maestro Mats Gustafsson’s words:
“Anna Högberg as
a modern free jazz standard bearer, keeping it all together, her rich alto
sax leading the ensemble into layers of high octane outburst and sensational
melodic variations. Her tone being able to cut landscapes open, to melt your
brain as we know it. Check the two tenor sax axes out! Elin Forkelid Larsson
and Malin Wattring know how to attack matters, how to structure solos and
ensemble work with intense warmth and melodic beauty. Drummer Anna Lund
punctuating the flow, laying fundaments of possibilities for the others.
Pianist Lisa Ullen adding her thorny but detailed phrases to the picture.
And then the deep sounding bass maestro Elsa Bergman with an unusual
imagination of how to position her own language and bass lines into a
collective of attacking free jazz”.
It was enough, more than enough, to fall
in love and become addicted to Högberg’s music, however and wherever
declined. Then, after the highly celebrated album Lena, Anna disappeared
from the radar and what we just read/heard was that she was working as a
nurse, whilst continuing to practice her instrument and seldom playing with
other musicians. Bad, too bad but we kept looking over the horizon,
searching for any sign of musical life. At last the news of a forthcoming
album was confirmed and the fever pitch finally began to decrease:
Ensamseglaren found its place in our shelves. Two pieces
(“Ensamseglaren/Inte Ensam” and “Gnistran/Ematopoesi/Emlodi”) played with a
brand new outfit (just Elin Forkelid as an appreciated return on tenor sax):
Niklas Barno, trumpet; Maria Bertel, trombone; Per Ake Homlander, tuba;
Dieb13, turntables; Alex Zethson, piano; Finn Loxbo, guitar and saw; Gus
Loxbo, double bass and saw; Kansan Zetterberg, double bass; Anton Jonsson,
drums; Dennis Egberth, drums. Anna, alto saxophone, as a rule.
The mood that
informs the record is of grief and sorrow for the loss of her father, the
“Lonely Sailor” of the title, pictured on the record’s cover as a young boy,
as she, in a very touching way, expressed in the liner notes:
”You had
already put away all the nautical charts, loosened the moorings and steered
out among the skerries. Mum stood waving from the jetty. You were alone, you
wanted in that way. It was to be just you in the boat this time. I called
out to you. I think you heard me and felt less lonely. We couldn’t carry
each other anymore, no matter how hard we tried. We washed our wounds on the
shore and scattered tears and rose petals in the bay”.
The music can’t avoid
these feelings and apparently does nothing to do so. Heavy clouds are
incumbent, waters are grey, rotten seaweed all over, the air smells of
storm: haunted atmosphere, shows the picture; amazing, jaw dropping sounds,
shows the Attack. The distorted, infectious drone guitars, the atonal piano
interventions don’t leave any doubt, the boat is at the mercy of the
streams, peace turning into chaos and the other way around, a very few and
foggy landmarks. But when the band unfolds all the sails and set a large
ensemble route, even delivering almost fanfare-esque texture, here it really
seems that such a collective dimension could be powerfully helpful to ease
the mourning: not yet a flat sea, still some malevolent, sinister waves but
the navigation became more secure and some rays of sun is now able to pierce
the leaden sky. Music as the healing force of the universe, we’d dare to
say, shouldn’t it sound too poorly banal and derivative. A true masterpiece,
we firmly state.