ØKSE - ØKSE

The Free Jazz Collective 0

By Martin Schray

Free Jazz, which in the 1960s and 70s was a music of rebellion and driven by the desire to reflect social conditions, has almost completely lost this ambition today. In the USA in particular, this task has been taken over by hip-hop and R’n’B. As a result, it’s necessary not to romanticize Free Jazz, but to view it as a contemporary music, which must ultimately offer room for cross-over experiments. ØKSE is such an experiment. The band seems to have recognized where the revolutionary momentum of the music has drifted and improvises on beats that are relevant to a younger generation. The consequence is a new music that demands new standards. The band itself cab almost be called a Free Jazzsuper group: New York based drummer Savannah Harris, Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen (who has played with actually everyone who has a name in today’s Free Jazz), Haitian electronic musician Val Jeanty, and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh (Koma Saxo), who is also on synths and sampler. Deciding to break relatively new ground, they have chosen four rappers for this collaboration, including the two Brooklyn superstars of conscious Rap - ELUCID and billy woods (a.k.a. Armand Hammer), plus Maassai and Cavalier, both also from the same New York borough. Their collaboration ultimately hopes that Gunter Hampel’s assertion that “you only get mature jazz listeners through genuine enthusiasm, just like in football” is true. You have to create a new awareness and you have to take care of the next generation. Not just among musicians. And this is exactly where ØKSE (the word means “axe“ in Danish) comes in.

Their debut consists of eight tracks, four instrumental ones and four with the rappers. “Skopje”, the opening track, is based on Val Jeanty’s and Petter Eldh’s brutally deep bass grooves, over which Elucid lays his dark, highly enigmatic lyrics (The vision is shared, but first, it's my own/Within the walls is the womb/Doom gospel/A hearkening tool/True apostle to whom?/First of my own, a harvesting eye/Take what I give/It’s never enough). Rasmussen's sax is more in the background, like a commentary on the gloomy description of reality, it wails, hisses, howls and screams. Savannah Harris doesn’t deliver hip-hop beats in the classic sense, she spins rather freely. Even heavier than “Skopje” is “Amager” with billy woods on the mic, ranting over an alienated beat reminiscent of Gil Scott-Heron’s version of “Me and the Devil”. Again, a dark street reality is described: I been a nigga too long/I know the dance, I know the damn song/I know those clammy hands going from the crack of my ass to the weight of my balls). The completely sick electro beat pushes forward more strongly, Eldh’s bass adds a classic jazz run, Harris provides a complex beat, which allows Rasmussen to lay a very free solo over the structure. Perhaps the best piece on the album. “The Dive”, on which Maassai raps, is mellower, which is partly due to her soulful vocals as well as the fact that Rasmussen acts rather reluctant here. Finally, “Kdance92” presents Cavalier, whose lyrics are fully supported by the band. It’s the most hip-hop-like track on the album and also the catchiest.

The instrumental pieces, on the other hand, are weirder but demonstrate an awareness of history. “Fragrance”, for example, quotes Roscoe Mitchell’s “Nonaah“, before switching out of nowhere into a hip-hop loop that spins seemingly endlessly before dropping back into the quote. At the same time, world music elements flow into the music - as on “Amar Økse” and “Onwards (keep going)”, a programmatic title for the project. In addition, samples provide structure in these pieces; they are laid over the beats, which are present here, like a kind of solo. The only exception is “Three Headed Økse”, a modern, typical free jazz piece.

When you go to free jazz concerts these days (with the exception of festivals), you often encounter a clientele that tends to be male, white and also over-aged (to be honest). If Free Jazz wants to attract a younger and more diverse audience, if it wants to regain relevance, projects like ØKSE are certainly a way forward. It’s definitely an interesting album for fans of Irreversible Entanglements or Sons of Kemet. I'm really looking forward to where they go from here.

ØKSE is available on vinyl (in a limited edition of 1000) and as a download. You can listen to it and order it here.

ØKSE by ØKSE