Jazz
Trost Records · 25 September 2026
Forty-two minutes across four tracks, recorded at Kafé Hærverk in Oslo, and the longest is “Eco-Echoes” (13:59): it begins with an unaccompanied bass solo from Nicolas Leirtrø that lays out the breathing of the theme before anyone else arrives, then gives way to a trombone solo from Jørgen Bjelkerud full of nuance. Dahl plays alto and the band takes its name from the daphnia, the freshwater crustacean.
The guest is Swedish pianist Lisa Ullén, and it’s she who runs the opening: “Wavelet” (7:09) puts her in the foreground and sets the weather for everything that follows. Ullén unsettles time with something of Cecil Taylor about her, without getting caught in that machinery of spirals and rolls; Patrycja Wybrańczyk’s drumming, standing in for Veslemøy Narvesen, holds the power without losing clarity.
On “Bølgende” (10:32) the pulse comes from Leirtrø and Wybrańczyk with a delicate insistence, and over that substrate Oscar Andreas Haug improvises on trumpet at half voice. Dahl’s music moves between free playing and writing, and what holds it up is that the improvised contours are calibrated: the soloists know where they start and where they come back to.
All four tracks go the same way. With three horns, bass, drums and a guest piano, a band from this school could have left at least one moment of collective release, and there isn’t one on the record: the dynamics rise and fall inside a narrow band. For a live album, forty-two minutes at the same temperature is a lot.
Four tracks, forty-two minutes, Trost Records, 25 September. The band’s previous album is Står Op Med Solen (Aguirre Records / Sonic Transmissions, 2024).
Rating: 7.7/10
Text by Aina Torrents