Enter Humcrush by Humcrush

Ståle Storløkken - fender rhodes, synth and electronics
Thomas Strønen - drums and electronics

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So, there’s five now. The latest one is Humcrush with Sidsel Endresen – a partnership with one of Norway’s most legendary singers and improvisers, showing specific coordinates because of that circumstance. And if “Ha!” was different from the previous albums, here is the new “Humcrush” introducing some profound changes in relation to “Humcrush”, “Hornswoggle” and “Rest at World’s End”. Between the last refered one and the record now in distribution are six years of interval: that’s too much time, time enough for a transformation of the musical concepts applied by Stale Storløkken and Thomas Strønen to their common project, thanks to the experiences they had with all the other bands with which they’re involved: Supersilent with or without John Paul Jones, Food, Elephant9, Time is a blind guide, Meadow or Motorpsycho.

It happens that “Humcrush” has less of the electro-acoustic experimentalism, of the ambientalism and of the space music factor we used to find in the earliest Humcrush, and more of its rock side, a kind of rock with roots in prog and psychedelism, yes, but electrocuted by a punk attitude. The influences from both jazz, electronica and rock continues to this day, and probably more than before, but there was a weight loss of the resources and, in consequence, of the music itself. This one was subtracted to find its essence: the keyboard and percussion panoplies of the past, and all of the virtual orchestrations, aren’t present anymore. This edition was recorded with just a Fender Rhodes connected to a guitarist pedalboard (sounding more as a guitar than an electric piano), a synthesizer (with few appearences) and a drumkit, nothing more. The old and dominant electronic processings gave place to a focus on distortion and fuzz, in line with a futuristic (and futurist, considering the importance, here, of noise) vision of the most improbable encounter imaginable: the one between the Herbie Hancock of “Crossing” and those genius junkies named Hawkwind. In the form of an improvised music proudly idiomatic, a sort of free jazz / free rock with the groove of funk. At the fifth record, Humcrush are better than ever.

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