Henriksen’s Cosmic Creation

This week, I’ve set out on a factfinding mission to discover whether the latest effort by Arve Henriksen, entitled Cosmic Creation, lives up to its grandiose title. Despite the obvious spoiler of my review, I can tell you that my conclusion was that it does indeed live up to the title. Aside from not being the space rock odyssey that it sounds like, the album succeeds in not only being really good but also having a pretty ethereal – some might even say cosmic – air to it.

Henriksen is perhaps most widely known for being a member of Supersilent, the Norwegian band who have become pretty legendary in the world of free improv. Their music certainly comes from the conceptual sphere of jazz, but the more experimental, noisy, claustrophic side that has led to so many interesting sounds and perhaps owes more than a little to the atonal serialism pioneered by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg towards the start of the last century. Supersilent may have gathered attention recently by touring with former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, in other words, fulfilling every teenage classic rock fan’s dream but with more saxophone screeching and alien sounds from Helge Sten (aka Deathprod)’s Audio Virus ( a combination of a variety of electronic instruments ranging from theremins to antiquated tape echoes) than many would perceive to be strictly necessary. I feel, though, that in addition to the excellent side projects of everyone involved, they should be primarily remembered for their no rehearsal policy, meaning everything commited to recording has been improvised on the spot, giving a very natural feel to their music and which is also is mightily impressive when you consider the quality of most of their output.

Cosmic Creation is actually intended as a companion piece to Chron, an album that originally featured as a disc in his huge box set, Solidification. Full disclosure requires me to comment that I haven’t heard Chron, although I’m given to understand that it has a fairly similar aesthetic.

Said aesthetic is hard to define, and contains only trace elements of the rather mild and luxurious sound of last year’s folk inspired effort, Places of Worship, and for my money it stands somewhere between that and his work with Supersilent. The opener ‘Cosmic Creation 1’ (in a manner I’m sure Henriksen would appreciate, from now on I’ll refer to the tracks only be numbers), features, from the off, a heavy drone which gives a much more full texture while complimenting some eastern sounding trumpet work. 2 really encapsulates what I love about this album, and is pretty representative, with sounds that resemble some kind of 70’s sci-fi computer having a malfunction, which creates an air of dissonance and discomfort without sounding offensively harsh. This is balanced by moments where the trumpet seems to build up a comforting melody only to be totally crushed by a reemergence of the electronic dissonance, which is vaguely reminiscient of the more experimental parts of Oneohtrix Point Never’s R Plus Seven.

Much like 2, the rest of the album seems to move between chaotic off-noise experimentalism, brooding dark ambient drones and his very recognisable trumpet, which in a way acts as a melodic guide through the confusing world of Cosmic Creation.

My personal favourite track would have to be 7. As a general rule of thumb, in an experimental album of short tracks, the longest is usually the best, due to either having the best developed idea or moving through the greatest variety of textures. It starts with a bleak drone that gives an ambience a little reminiscient of Hacker Farm’s _Poundland. _This slowly develops into some Abul Mogard-esque ambient with a warm, amorphous sound, and truly some of the best ambient you’re likely to hear this year. It devolves into a raspily dissonant pattern that, like many of the other tracks, balances beautiful, solemn sounding trumpet with harsh dissonance.

Cosmic Creation shows a huge amount of variety in its short length and gives something fans of Supersilent and Henriksen’s solo work are both going to love. It shows a great approach to experimental in contrasting it with concerting jazz with a nod to classical.