The [PIAS] Store

In the 25 years since jazz musician / keys-player / composer / producer Bugge Wesseltoft founded Jazzland Recordings, he has engaged in numerous group projects and collaborations such as New Conception Of Jazz, duos with the likes of Sidsel Endresen, Henning Kraggerud and Henrik Schwarz, one-off projects such as Trialogue, Bugge And Friends and OKWorld! And of course, the super-trio Rymden. However, it is in his solo material that we can glimpse the true soul behind the effervescent and mercurial mind of one of the most influential and important Norwegian musicians of an entire generation.

On "Be Am", his latest solo album, Wesseltoft has allowed his creative impulses to wander where they may - no preset rules to govern the composition and production, no obligations to (not) use electronics, not even a will to be totally alone. This is pure playing and composition, where the music speaks freely by whatever means it will.

In the more meditative pieces, there is a sense of both natural calm and imposed calm, the difference between which should be apparent to anyone who has suffered the changes of the COVID lockdown periods - there are times when we naturally experience a mental peace, while there are others when we have to bring ourselves, often with great strength of will, to something approximating it.

Many of the pieces here have the feeling of being wordless songs - indeed, no words are needed when the notes convey all that is needed. The music of "Be Am" carries ghosts of uncertainty, whispers of resignation, and faint echoes of frustration. But throughout there are rays of hope, a warm clear light of peace and tranquillity, and growing flames of an unquenchable fire of determination. It is music of, and for, the human soul.

TRACKLISTING:

1. Resonate
2. Tide
3. State
4. Emerging
5. Roads
6. Messenger
7. Green
8. Be Am
9. Life
10. Gonna Be OK
11. Deeper
12. Sunbeams