Mats Eilertsen
And Then Comes The Night

Harmen Fraanje piano
Mats Eilertsen double bass
Thomas Strønen drums
Recorded May 2018, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: February 1, 2019

A feeling of transcendence occurs the moment Harmen Fraanje’s pianism wraps its arms around you in “22,” the introduction to bassist Mats Eilertsen’s And Then Comes The Night. And as the brushes of drummer Thomas Strønen complete the triangle, you find yourself being ushered through a portal unlike any other to a space where harmony whispers between every air molecule. That this tune—one of Eilertsen’s—also closes the album in variation is testament to the circularity of life, the very dust from which melodies arise and to which they must return.

The spontaneous creations of “Perpetum” and “Then Comes The Night” yield the most intimate moments of the session. Whether in the former’s subterranean percussion and arco bassing or the latter’s angular pianism, passion exudes from the pores of this music’s skin. This is by no stretch of the imagination a group in search of a groove or means to convey it, but rather, as in the Fraanje-penned “Albatross” and “Soften,” concerns itself with memories in the making. The piano/bass duets of “After The Rain” and “Solace” underscore the necessity of climate in their evocation of wind and stillness. In both, comfort is achieved by virtue of awareness alone. This is playing that relies on faith to shield its feet from burning sands and frozen tundra alike.

In Eilertsen’s own “Sirens” and “The Void,” mosaics dissolve into watercolor and vice versa. Each is a window into the other, flush to the touch yet visually dimorphous in contrast, and the second in particular cradles the most nocturnal of bass solos.

Although this album represents a decade of R&D in the trio’s laboratory, and follows two appearances on the Hubro label, you might just feel a genesis at play, reaching tendril after tendril from darkness into light, until galaxies are drawn together into one amorphous whole, spinning quietly if for no other reason than to hear itself sing.