Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Espen Berg's Maetrix captures the pianist and composer at a bold creative high, as he upscales his craft, this time working with the celebrated Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. Originally premiered to a full ovation at the 2017 Molde International Jazz Festival, this six-part suite finally sees release, recorded between Oslo's Rainbow Studio and Ora Studio in Trondheim. Berg furthers his rep for rhythmic complexity and emotive depth to a 14-piece ensemble featuring standout artists Daniel Herskedal, Rob Waring, and Hayden Powell, while vocalists Kirsti Huke and Sissel Vera Pettersen ensure a graceful vocal topline. Echoes of Pat Metheny and Kenneth Dahl Knudsen waft through the compositions, but Maetrix stands firmly in Berg's own voice, radiating the sense of a collaborative effort years in the making.

Notes: Close The App, Make The Ting is a collection of ideas shared by Elijah that began in July 2021, as the Covid 19 lockdowns were ending in the UK. They started as simple notes questioning what the music and creative scenes would look like after being shut down for 18 months shared regularly on Instagram, then developed into a multimedia project that spanned visual installations, an album with grime MC Jammz, a club night and a lecture series that toured the world.

Close The App, Make The Ting: Transformative Prompts for the Modern Artist brings together the best of the ideas and the projects they inspired. This book is for anyone producing or thinking of producing creative work, that needs something outside of ‘advice’, these are evergreen artistic prompts that will inspire new ways of approaching being an artist in the 2020s.

The book is 25cm x 25 cm, and the 144 pages are printed on premium heavyweight paper.