Customer Reviews

Cartography

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There has always been a place for delicacy in music. In fact delicacy is something music gets across better than many other mediums. Now it need no longer be simply remote or soto voce or reverb laden. The profound strides in digital recording are finally capable of delivering a delicacy with presence, with force, specificity and nearness. And the use to which Henriksen puts delicacy in this recording makes it the principal organizational attribute and compositional technique. Free of false or real cadence, the pieces provide access to a new sort of auditory experience, one of apprehending rather than merely comprehending.

There are many moments within "Cartography" that choose to intimate rather than demarcate an untouchable and immersive music. For anyone who managed to browse through Eno's "Oblique Strategies" some decades ago, a card I often drew (paraphrasing now) read "Imagine the music as a series of disconnected events". This is difficult to do while still achieving enough coherence to be perceptible as music to the listener. Yet here, Henriksen accomplishes something very much implied rather than stated, and does so without disorienting or disconnecting completely from structure. And that is perhaps the single most compelling strength of this particular work: it insistently shifts the perception of the listener to an intricate quiet issuing from the reassuring envelopes of commanding presence.

Although a fan of the ECM record label, I favor more uptempo jazz. That being said, this album is unbelievable in creating its own identity...It captures and hooks you. Arve Henriksen has also found is own unique voice on the trumpet, which is an element of jazz in it's own right. You should give this album a try, it's NOT new age, but something else entirely...

This is one of my favourite ECM releases this year.
Henriksen is an outstanding norwegian musician.Always transparent and delicate.
Jan Bang, Audun Kleive on drums, Erik Honroré between others well known musicians, made a high level interpretation.
Colourful beats are given by voices (Trio Mdiaeval, Anna Maria Friman)
Poems by David Sylvian complete the work.
In short, this is high level performance ECM cd.

I love the feel of this entire album. "Recording Angel" is a particular favorite, although I must admit that the instrument introduced on minute 2:31 kills the whole mood for me. Minute 3:47 grates against my ears. There are a couple of other tracks that have the same effect on me, but not nearly to the same extent. Perhaps it is because I am not a huge jazz fan? I would strongly recommend this to any ambient music fan.

CARTOGRAPHY works out of and on a level all its own. Arve Hendricksen has created an aural experience with the music on this album the has stillness, silence, and exquisite musical taste in the manner in which all the compositions on this album sneak up on the listener. It does not so much come right at the ear of the listener, as it does encompass and enfold the being and the aura of the listener. This is not music easy to categorize. But I can say this about Mr. Hendricksen: he has paid great attention to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. And out of the brilliant mist of that seminal album, he has forged and entered a creative, musical space all his own. He owes the silence he has the courage to explore in this album to another musical genius as well: Bill Evans. ECM is an extraordinary label; one with the courage of its convictions, musically. Most highly recommended.

In the 2008 ECM release CARTOGRAPHY, the Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen offers 12 cuts in a rather unusual jazz vein. The basis of each cut are ambient soundscapes, mainly crafted by Erik Honoré on synthesizer who also uses samples from Trio Mediaeval, but occasionally with live input by Eivind Aarset on guitar and Audun Kleive on percussion. Henriksen then plays his trumpet on top of these, in an exceedingly spare, breathy style.

Over the first couple of tracks, the effect is magical. The opening "Poverty and its Opposite" needs only a handful of trumpet notes to express something vast. On the second piece, "Before and Afterlife", the musician David Sylvian reads his own poetry, which reminds me of Gary Snyder's work. Unfortunately, from there most of the rest of the album seems filler, repeating the same general setup but no longer offering anything powerful. When Sylvian appears once more on "Thermal", the effect is meh. I think this release will appeal more to fans of ambient musicians like Harold Budd than to jazz afficionados. I sometimes listen to the opening tracks and the final one, but I'm not drawn back to the album as a whole.

I'll be brief. This is a gorgeous CD. Delicate, compelling, atmospheric. Henriksen has truly found an original voice on the instrument, and the sonic world he creates around it is fully realized on this record. However: I really didn't need the poetry.
For me it completely blew the vibe. I wish he'd done a separate CD of poetry, because for this listener it makes the CD unlistenable as a whole, which is a shame, because there is such a flow. Nothing against poetry, it just didn't work for me here.