CHRISTIAN WINTHER, ANJA LAUVDAL AND ESPEN REINERTSEN
“NIGHT AS DAY DAY AS NIGHT”

https://www.sofamusic.no/album/night-day-day-night

Texturally varied but seamless and dreamily brief, Night as Day Day as Night is the mesmerizing debut studio recording from a trio of remarkable Norwegian musicians. Christian Winther, Anja Lauvdal, and Espen Reinertsen all have rich musical histories, performing and recording a wide variety of styles from avant jazz to leftfield folk and ambient music. “I think all three of us,” Winther says, “are very interested in music that lingers in the in-between state of things.” And what these musicians have created on Night as Day is indeed enchantingly “in-between.”

“All three of us are deeply connected to the experimental scene in Oslo,” Lauvdal says. Lauvdal, who is an in-demand collaborator, improviser, and solo artist, explains that the only real goal of the Night as Day recording session was for the performers to mix their “individual expressions into new music.” Lauvdal’s sometimes oneiric playing contributes a kind of early winter morning light quality to Night as Day, but her profound adaptability and sheer skill as a player, however somewhat tempered here, is nevertheless pervasive. It could be no other way, considering the versatility Lauvdal yields in collaborating with artists like Jenny Hval, or Hamid Drake and William Parker or Laurel Halo, who produced Lauvdal’s 2022 debut full-length, From a Story Now Lost.

Reinertsen and Winther are no less esteemed. The former is a deft and ubiquitous presence in studios and on stages in Norway and abroad, playing regularly with Streifenjunko, Christian Wallumrød Ensemble, and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, while Winther is himself a tireless collaborator in the Norwegian avant garde scene as well as a celebrated solo artist. His second record, Urfuglen was selected as album of the year in 2022 by Klassekampen, one of the biggest newspapers in Norway.

With these impressive and varied résumés, it is no wonder that throughout Night as Day Day as Night’s approximately 26 minutes, a variety of styles and approaches somehow all have a say. “Something like this is hard to do by yourself,” Winther says. What is remarkable is that Night as Day neither draws out any particular form or tone for too long, but neither does it seem to move at anything faster than the pace of a cloud on a windless morning.

Winther, Lauvdal, and Reinertsen play with utter patience –– but that patience is balanced with a profound generosity towards their audience and an evident interest in telling a story. The result is something that feels impossibly rich and wide-ranging for being so brief and so focused.