(Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Rune Grammofon) [WEB] Albatrosh (Eyolf Dale & Andre Roligheten) - Night Owl - 2014, FLAC (tracks), lossless

Albatrosh is the Norwegian duo of pianist Eyolf Dale and saxophonist/clarinettist André Roligheten.
This album – their sixth, they have been playing together since they were 17 – opens with the brief burps and chinks of what could almost be tuning up before Dale starts to insert a catchy country funk phrase – imagine the kind of riff Keith Jarrett would use as a building block in one of his 1970s solo concerts – and Roligheten joins him on saxophone. The tune is called Duvet Day and it does wrap around one nicely, Roligheten using percussive pad taps (presumably on bass clarinet) to fill in something of a bass line behind the piano.
The Sheriff is a faster affair, Roligheten again adding bass clarinet bass under Dale’s busy, jumpy two-handed rhythm, while also playing tenor above. His range of sounds on the reed instruments is really impressive, from slight metallic sheen to full rattle and hum.
As with Albatrosh’s 2011 album Yonkers, there are shadows of American Songbook tunes that occasionally fall across the music, which is mostly a really striking and original blend of what we might expect of 20-something Norwegians signed to Rune Grammofon, but also a more U.S. modern jazz sensibility. There is classic romantic jazz here, there is the avant-garde, there is the blues, and there is contemporary classical music too.
Nut Job demands some pretty exacting two-playing-as-one technique, but it still maintains a marvellous looseness. Roligheten throws in a quote from A Love Supreme along the way. Early Bird is an achingly beautiful ballad which somehow seems to bring Irving Berlin and Maurice Ravel into the same room along with a Celtic folk player. Hula Hoop is intriguing sounds and silence.
The title track comes at the end. Again Dale and Roligheten are very much as one stating the theme, before heading on parallel paths, sometimes echoing each other – the hoarse, burring sounds Roligheten gets working a treat over Dale’s expansive, generous piano style. The saxophonist gets some solo space here before Dale rejoins him in marvellously delicate filigree.
Even if you have found Rune Grammofon’s stable of bands a little too left field for your tastes in the past, do give this a try. Albatrosh deserve much wider recognition and Night Owl is an exceptionally lovely album. - Peter Bacon, thejazzbreakfast.com

Piano – Eyolf Dale
Saxophone, Clarinets – André Roligheten
Recorded at Fattoria Music in Osnabrück, Germany June 2014