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Maternity Beat (2LP Vinyl)
Maternity Beat (2LP Vinyl)
BY Mollestad, Hedvig & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra
- Category:Jazz Rock
"With Maternity Beat, Hedvig Mollestad has surpassed herself, most significantly as a composer and arranger, and delivered her most ambitious work to date. And that´s not a proclamation to be taken lightly. Mollestad, after all, has been one of Norway’s most adventurous and hardest-working musicians since the Molde International Jazz Festival named her the Young Jazz Talent of the Year in 2009. Recorded with the 12-piece Trondheim Jazz Orchestra (who have previously worked with legends like Chick Corea and Joshua Redman), Maternity Beat is a sprawling double album and true career milestone. The sheer sonic and emotional scope of this album required Mollestad wear multiple hats: guitar explorer, composer, arranger, improviser, collaborator, and, as the striking title implies, mother. In addition to encompassing the full evolution of her sound to date, it offers deeply personal meditations on the nature of family and pressing social justice issues.
While listeners will no doubt encounter the Mahavishnu Orchestra-inspired fire music that has made the Hedvig Mollestad Trio heavyweights in 21st-century fusion and jazz-metal, Maternity Beat also expands on the contemplative experimentation showcased on two of Mollestad’s recent solo works: 2020’s Ekhidna, and Tempest Revisited, released in 2021, both of which netted her a Spellemannpris (the Norwegian equivalent of a Grammy)."
"Mollestad's great gift is to use music to give voice to those who have had their own taken from them. With this large scale ensemble piece, Mollestad takes a fresh turn in her composing journey by foregrounding vocals. Solberg and Bjornstad's voices evoke mothers, children and humanity in their most vulnerable yet celebratory incarnations. In its dark re-working of Scott Walker's uncanny ‘The Farmer in the City’, the opening vox of ‘On the Horizon Part 1’ evokes the horror of migrating mothers and children (and fathers) abandoned to their deaths at sea as they desperately seek sanctuary.
Even the apparent innocence of ‘Do Re Mi Ma Ma’ is an eerie inversion, more nursery crime than rhyme, even as Waade's violin kicks in lost, but lyrical.
This is full-on complex polyphonic music, sometimes evoking Live/Evil Miles, with Mollestad privileging space for soprano and tenor sax solos that are as in your face as those big themes she lays down for the ensemble. Given that, Lofthus’ bombast on drums is appropriate if at times terrifying, especially on the closing ‘Maternity Suite’ which wrenches to a halt like Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony.
Mollestad has a sharp humour and endless resourcefulness. ‘Donna Ovis Peppa’ is a post bop rave, ‘Salt Peanuts’ on a sugar rush, powered by crunching keys. There's also a tenderness, but no false sentiment: ‘Her Own Shape’, with its spoken meditation on maternity (‘My self within me will split to be larger/Will part to be stronger’) is as unblinkingly honest as it is moving. A cry of love indeed." - Jazzwise