Elephant9 with Terje Rypdal - Catching Fire (Rune Gramophone, 2024)

By Eyal Hareuveni

Norwegian guitar hero Terje Rypdal joined the performances of local free-prog-rock power trio Elephant9 - keyboard player Ståle Storløkken (of Supersilent, who played with Rypdal since the mid-nineties, including in his last studio album, Conspiracy, ECM, 2020), bassist Nikolai Hængsle and drummer Torstein Lofthus. Catching Fire captures the best of these performances, at Oslo’s Nasjonal Jazzscene - Victoria in January 2017, a few months before Rypdal celebrated his 70th birthday.

You may feel goosebumps when you will hear the familiar, sustained-icy melodic guitar lines of Rypdal in the opening piece, “I Cover the Mountain Top”, sending you immediately to the iconic ECM albums of Rypdal from the seventies like After The Rain and Odyssey. But Rypdal rarely takes solos in these powerful performances, and there are extended times that he listens to the Keith Emerson-tinged Storløkken’s Hammond attacks and the aggressive-propulsive rhythm section of Hængsle and Lofthus, updating the Miles Davis’ electric era bands sound with psychedelic fireworks.

Rypdal plays only when his intervention is crucial but every time he plays the guitar is pure gold. Rypdal injects masterful melodic finesse and rhythmic fiery wisdom into the explosive ride of Elephant9. He finds a contrapuntal melodic spot on top of the wild and super intense dynamics of Elephant9, more in the way of Rypdal’s mid-eighties power trio the Chasers than his early or later ECM albums. David Fricke, who wrote the liner notes, compares Catching Fire to the classic live albums of Mahavishnu Orchestra, ELP and King Crimson, and suggests that his interplay Storløkken evokes Pink Floyd’s Meddle crashing the oedipal climax of the Doors’ “The End”. Either way, you do not want to miss this magical gem.