The most recent solo offering from Food's Thomas Strønen takes things in a decidedly different direction. A renowned jazz percussionist and drummer, Strønen abandons the traditional drum kit setup and makes a percussion record fused subtly with electronics. Composed and performed in real time, Strønen takes elements of jazz, improvisation, and IDM and meshes them together in a weird sonic stew. The results over the eight-track offering reveal a cross between some of Steve Reich's later works mixed with the quirkiness of the Tigerbeat6 catalog and a pinch of Zappa's Synclavier works thrown in for good measure. - Rob Theakston
There´s warmth and clarity to these tracks, Strønen´s restrained use of effects adding colour at crucial moments. His use of delay is excellent, deploying repeat echoes to build structures rather than construct impressive but artificial sonic spaces. Immaculately produced, with each percussive hit and textural fleck seeming to exist in a sonic environment all its own, the album has a sensuality and spaciousness that is utterly irresistible.
The Wire (UK)
Here, Strønen leaves behind his instrument of predilection, the drums, to investigate a far wider range of percussive sounds and develop a series of intricate compositions with clear emphasis on the musical aspect of his work. If the setting of this album is resolutely experimental and feeds on Strønen's background in improvised work, the result is a fascinating, and surprisingly accessible, collection of compositions which evokes in turn traditional oriental Gamelan music, which serves as basis for this album, African percussions, and the work of Pierre Bastien or that of Steve Reich. Strønen works at microscopic level, conscious of capturing the smallest particles of sound and use them to make the silences in between notes resound as loud as the notes themselves. Although the pace slows down slightly on ”E… Quilibrium” and ”Mutti”, there is no respite as such to be found anywhere. Strønen creates a radical sweeping soundtrack that appears at once terribly compact and dense and incredibly vast and sparse. Elements of electro-acoustic regularly collide with frenetic sonic sentences to generate subtle emotional moments. ”Pohlitz” is at once intense and fragile, and has so much to offer that it is difficult to appreciate the full extend of Thomas Strønen's work, however this is undeniably the charm of this record, as it appears almost entirely new, yet so utterly familiar, even after repeated listen. 4.8/5. Album of the month.
The Milkfactory (UK)
As a member of Strønen and Storløkken (who dropped the fantastic Humcrush album in 2004) and a member of Food (with Arve Henriksen) he has a great deal of promise to live up to and this record does not disappoint in any way. This has gamelan instruments used in a way totally unfamiliar to my ears, being hit with millisecond precision and recorded beautifully to capture all the odd resonances and deep bass tones of the pots, bells and barrels. This is not an easy album to get into, there are no `big tracks' or explosions of style, yet every moment captures a beautiful original landscape and is guaranteed to sound unlike anything you have every heard previously. This is the beginning of what is going to be a stunning year for Rune Grammofon, and Pohlitz is only the first of their essential releases.
Boomkat (UK)
Bjork's “Headphones” is evoked, and indeed, headphones is where this record really works its magic. Other influences can be discerned, the minimal compositions of Steve Reich and Michael Nyman haunt proceedings, but also the strange percussive rhythms and clanging gongs of Gamelan. Yet overall there's a playfulness at work which makes the listening experience less po-faced and more open-mouthed. This is not an album for parties, make no mistake, but neither is it impenetrable. In fact, it is difficult not to be mesmerised by the sheer difference and remote, yet warm atmosphere Strønen creates. The key is his focus on the dichotomies in the music, the disparate threads of jazz and electronics, light and dark, icy and temperate woven together to create something that really doesn't sound like anything else, even his Rune Grammofon label mates. A dispatch from far within the void.
Stylusmagazine (US)
There's considerable use of electronics, but the electronic aspect never dominates; some amazing grooves are constructed, but there's usually melody amid the rhythm. This is not what most people would think of as an electronic album, dance or otherwise, but in many ways loops and ambient techno have prepared listeners to deal with music like Strønen's. Then again, the track “Interacting Massive Particles” recalls parts of Morton Subotnik's classic ”Silver Apples of the Moon”, which certainly influenced the more intellectual end of the techno spectrum. It's impossible to listen to the vast array of clinking, clattering, shimmering, mostly metallic timbres (using no actual drums) that Strønen deploys without thinking of gamelan music, especially given the ecstatic momentum Strønen's grooves achieve. To a degree one also is reminded of Steve Reich's brand of minimalism, especially in its period of sparse instrumentation (when Reich was influenced by world music, including gamelan), but Strønen's pieces evolve more quickly and sometimes include the improvised bits that a solo performer can throw in, though most of these pieces seem composed in advance. In fact, if these pieces were orchestrated, they'd be just as good. I don't know where I'm going to file this album in my collection, but I'm sure glad to have it.
The Big Takeover (US)
The Food drummer's solo debut finds him swirling dubwise diffusion into a batter no less billowy for its standard-issue bells, blocks, drums, and the like, all played in real time and gently enhanced by well-tempered electronics. Marimba-driven opener "Heterogenous Substances" softens Reichian single-mindedness with discrete delay and the occasional nod to zero. "Ingenious Pursuits" evokes Partch himself, if the inventor had made two-fisted IDM. While both have plenty of yeast, Strønen's dough first rises properly on "Dispatches." Imagine Kraftwerk's gamelan doppelgängers positing a balance of melody and funk that's robotic without being mechanical, dark, rich, and thoroughly through-composed, with dynamics that recall Max Roach at his most nuanced. Antelopes, jellyfish, pieces of dead skin: All would look magnificent dancing to this track. They'd feel great, too, once they got over the shock of hearing electronica that was mostly acoustic.
Seattle Weekly (US)
I must admit, I am rather impressed by this. His music is true cross-over of improvised music, electronic music and composed music, but played with sheer elegance. The sampled elements provide a nice, relaxed bed for the percussion to sleep in. Minimal in it's playing, a bit Steve Reich like, but more smeared out, a bit more empty, but always with a slow building of the pieces, by slowly adding elements, real time percussion and sampled elements thereof. In 'Natural History Of Creation' Strønen reaches for a Gamelan sound, with a similar hypnotic feel to it. Quite an amazing debut.
Vital Weekly (NE)
Thomas Stronen, a prolific young Norwegian jazz drummer, lets the cat out of the bag, style-wise, early on his debut solo LP, Pohlitz. To illustrate what I mean: I’m imagining a minimal Scandinavian room, all brushed steel and functional black leather furniture. There’s a wall of windows looking out over a frozen lake. In the soft aftermath of an ice storm, rivulets of ice crack and crinkle in the wind. There is nobody about. So, bare, barren ice-fields or mathematical formulae, then: if you’re hoping for harmony or melody, this isn’t the disc for you.
Stronen’s in a number of bands that I haven’t heard before — Humcru, a theatrical/krautrock/techno/free jazz assimilation of keyboards and drums; Food, an electronic jazz duo with saxophone; Parish, a fuller jazz quartet with piano, bass, drums and saxophone/clarinet; and other projects — and has racked up 29 separate CD appearances in his career so far. Pohlitz is his debut solo release, though, and it’s definitively a solo project: the album was recorded in real time, without pre-programming or overdubs. Add that to the fact that this is a percussion album made without any real drums (just electronic clicks and clacks, and various “beatable items”) and you have an interesting concept indeed.
From the first, Stronen’s enthusiasm for the music he’s making is palpable: a clattering glockenspiel-like sound tinkles confidently on the opening “Heterogeneous Substances”, till the rhythms gently bump against each other in the looped way of Indonesian gamelan music. “E… quilibrium” opens with an ice-pick of tapped out Morse Code. “Dispatches” is more mathematical, and more intricate; the electronic elements highlighted, a cacophony of bell-sounds briefly flares up and disappears. The final, near nine-minute epic, “Natural History of Creation”, predictably builds from a simple theme to greater and greater levels of complexity; a fitting close to the disc.
The live recording lends the music an air of improvisation (though many elements here are so complex that the framework of the compositions, at least, must have been composed beforehand). In fact, you can hear Stronen’s breathing in the microphone while he records “Mutti”. The effect is charming, and injects an unexpectedly human rhythm: amid these mathematical beats, the human breath strains to establish a different, organic rhythm. But not every improvisation is pulled off. A high-cymbal crash anchors the circular “Ingenious Pursuits”, as the tinkle of electronic clicks and clacks runs around and around; the injection of a ringtone-wail, or the wobble of a synth that sounds like R2D2 is startling, and feels a little out of place.
Despite all the hitting and beating, Pohlitz is a fairly quiet disc. Sharing more with Steve Reich’s minimal works than with anything bombastically percussive or overtly jazzy, the compositions exist in their own quiet universe. The tree falling alone in the forest, perhaps, these compositions are so self-sufficient it’s almost as if they don’t care whether you hear them or not. So then, Stronen’s spare, sparse compositions won’t be for everyone. But these clusters of percussive, repetitive tones and complex acoustic drum-beats are interesting, and challenging; a welcome if not fully comprehended addition to my library. It’s all a bit cerebral for this hour of the morning. - Dan Raper
Tracks
1. Heterogeneous Substances
2. Ingenious Pursuits
3. Lavoisier
4. Dispatches
5. E...Quilibrium
6. Mutti
7. Interacting Massive Particles
8. Natural History Of Creation
THOMAS STRØNEN drums, percussion, bells, cymbals, live electronics, marimba
All music composed by Thomas Strønen
Rune Grammofon – RCD 2051 (Norway)