unclechristo | Jul. 9th, 2015

So the 2nd concert treat I gave myself was to see Norwegian jazz/ambient trumpeter Arve Hendriksen - I have some of his albums but in truth the main attraction was the place - 6th floor of the Nomura Building facing the Thames - not a big glass building one is usually allowed in.

As for Arve - he's a conundrum - I really dug him for a while and got 3 albums - then suddenly realised - for some reason the music didnlt really take me anywhere in my mind - just to a studio and him with his tricks. He makes some pretty music but something is missing for me. I knew all this before I went but, as I said, I liked the idea. He did a solo 45min set of trumper, piccolo trumpet, folk, clarinet, ipad, laptop & minikeys for each. He did his loopy thing, his tasty arabic sounding atmospheric trumpet, his ethnic high voice singing thing, his weird wonky earthy electronic loops, and finished on a pretty track i recognised from an album. Sometimes he did play instead of loops, played what sounded like backing tracks. Anyway - it was fine and some pretty stuff, but re-inforced my impression he is a man with a bunch of tricks. Listening back to his albums he has been alternating them for a while. I'm glad I saw him do it tho.
A young band called Wako came on - they were fine - but we were tired and walked back to the hotel.

Next day - like last week with the Marcos Valle gig I got the nice post-breakfast hotel lie in listening to music and reading before heading back home. The 2 concert treats were cool - but it's time to start some recording again. I came home and I did just that. :-)