The saxophonist Mette Rasmussen and turntablist Val Jeanty continue to be two of the most requested names in free jazz, whether the Danish alto is hollowing out her instrument with Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer as Glass Triangle, adopting oblique strategies with Joe McPhee and Dennis Tyfus or digging out the searing melodies and highland drones of a live performance with Akira Sakata, Jim O’Rourke and Chris Corsano at the old SuperDeluxe in Nishi-Azabu, while Jeanty who defines her sound as ‘Afro-electronica’ might be found improvising with Kris Davis onstage or weaving impromptu stories around such themes as Haitian folklore and the black womanly divine alongside Candice Hoyes and Mimi Jones as Nite Bjuti.
For their eponymous debut album as ØKSE they are joined by the drummer Savannah Harris, who has collaborated on a crossover selection of some of the best records of the past few years in the form of Mali Obomsawin’s gnawing Sweet Tooth, with Angelika Niescier and Tomeka Reid for the blazing interplay of Beyond Dragons, carrying along the warm breezes and fond reminiscences of Phasor by Helado Negro and gazing into a Perpetual Void as part of the all-new Marta Sanchez Trio.
Recording between Studio Paradiso in Oslo and Brooklyn Recording Paradise, it is the versatile Swedish multi-instrumentalist Petter Eldh who completes the lineup on bass, samplers and synthesizers, with his recent work including records on ECM and We Jazz with his longtime musical partners Kit Downes and Otis Sandsjö. The name ØKSE means ‘axe’ in Rasmussen’s native Danish, and while the album notes offer a likeness to the Yoruba philosophy àṣẹ as life flow, the band cleave into their debut offering, which is probably the furthest foray into avant-garde jazz to date on the experimental hip hop label Backwoodz Studioz.
As four rappers come along for the ride, ØKSE squawk and squeal into life on the opening track ‘Skopje’, which features ELUCID of Armand Hammer. The steely ruminator identifies his sound as ‘doom gospel’, pores over the shaping of shifty sentences and with a degree of irony dwells on the task of running a record label, where ‘logistic decisions and safe words’ are the first order of business, covering appearances with the lines ‘Digital overlords don’t need free promo / Church clothes, good shoes, stone-faced in the photo’. Speaking of the discovery process and his efforts on the track, ELUCID writes:
woods came home from somewhere in some nordic region talking about the really cool saxophonist who played free jazz named Mette. he shared a few links from one of her projects and indeed, she had some far out sounds. fast forward a few months, i got word that Mette was putting together a project with a few other players for a Backwoodz release. I hadn’t heard a note of what came to be called ØKSE’s new material but i wanted to be involved. Unfortunately, i was out of town when the band converged in NYC to record the initial tracks for the album. Mette gave me the bands demo. I was immediately drawn to the interplay of the turntablist and drums. The track already seemed complete to me. I wrote to where i found the pockets.
On other parts of the record free saxophone squalls around beefed-up handclaps with growls, spliced African chants and serpentine hisses also used for their percussive qualities. It’s all about the interplay to be found between the highs of Rasmussen’s alto and Jeanty’s bristling electronics and turntable scratches, between those tables and Savannah Harris’s roiling drums which seem to occupy separate sides of the mix, creating a space or chasm in which the other actors might operate, and which together with Eldh’s bass make for a toxically potent rhythm section.
The selection of rappers become part of the tapestry, with the staccato lurch and woozy bass of ‘Amager’ featuring the Backwoodz head billy woods giving a little bit of Madvillainy, as he unpacks what must be the keenest depiction of airport security yet recorded to tape, beginning with the intrusive lines ‘Colourblind drug dog flopped on the floor, head on his paws / The customs palm my clean drawers’. The distant horn and dank shuffle of ‘The Dive’ bears another Brooklynite in maassai, while fresh from his studio rebirth on Different Type Time the transient philosopher Cavalier arrives late over the industrial beats and synth vamps of ‘Kdance 92’, before Rasmussen uncorks the bottle. Then the clave patterns and limpid saxophone runs of ‘Onwards (keep going)’ cede to a street carnival of pan flutes and chimes as ØKSE revel in their album’s closing moments.
