Seconds can slip past unnoticed, stacking up into minutes. Then come hours, days, weeks. But where did the time go? Oh, how you’ve grown! Why, it seems like only yesterday... That’s the sensation of each improvised segment on this album from trumpeter Lina Allemano and her Berlin-based trio, plus guest. It’s a record in constant but barely perceptible flux.
Ohrenschmaus is an international group, with Norwegian bassist Dan Peter Sundland and German drummer Michael Griener joining their Canadian leader. Flip Side is the trio’s second release following their 2020 debut Rats and Mice (review here ). It also adds Andrea Parkins on three tracks. She carried an accordion, electronic effects and some unspecified objects all the way from the USA.
The first track, called “Sidetrack”, awakens with rusted joints and creaky cogwheels. It’s a nine-minute journey around a pre-dawn metropolis that’s slowly whirring into action. A million machinations scratch and shudder until Allemano announces her arrival with long-tone calls. More sounds rise, competing for attention and causing the atmosphere to thicken.
“The Line” is probably the most thoroughly composed piece on the album and it features an abrupt shift of mood that stands in contrast to the rest of the record. A short passage leaves Allemano alone in the heart of the music, before drums and bass return for an improvised section with an untypically hectic feeling.
Allemano’s trumpet sound is clear and concentrated, but she plays with more fizz and soft edges on “Stricken”. It’s the most moving piece on the album. Sundland uses the bow on his bass for a while. It’s a mournful track with a heavier emotional weight despite its lower mass of tonal material.
Flip Side is a many-sided release that changes shape subtly, but constantly. Lina Allemano has extensive classical training and commands a striking variety of extended techniques, which she combines to create infinite fluctuations and mutations on this small-group record. The forty minutes and twenty-one seconds slip past like a half-remembered daydream.
The album is available on CD and as a digital download here. You can read another review of Flip Side on Free Jazz Collective here .
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