Tony Dudley Evans (on ‘The Undanced Dance’ and ‘Muted Language’)

Emil Karlsen is a young drummer from Norway, but who studied on the jazz course at Leeds Conservatoire, and has settled in that city, seemingly feeling more at home in the UK improvised music scene rather than on the Norwegian scene. He is constantly coming up with new projects, and in the last few years he has toured and recorded with Philipp Wachsmann and Neil Metcalfe, recorded with Ed Jones and Matt Bourne, and is now playing a leading role with Bead Records, the label set up in 1974, and run by Philipp Wachsmann and Matthew Hutchinson.

Bead Records has over the years brought out 40 albums and featured 60 musicians. Its latest releases both feature Emil, one in a collaboration with light.box, the group with Alex Bonney and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, the other a drum duet with Mark Sanders, who was Emil’s main teacher at Leeds Conservatoire.

The album with light.box, (The Undanced Dance, Bead 44) has three tracks, the first two divided into three parts, the third into two parts. It is an album of electronic music and percussion with some very punchy trumpet and electric bass playing added into the mix. It is therefore more grounded and rhythmic than some more ambient electronic music. On The Shot Must Fall the atmosphere created varies across the three parts; Pt 1 has a slight ominous and mysterious mood, Pt 2 has more of a drone feel, while Pt 3 is more playful in an abstract way. Emil is always playing something interesting, sometimes creating choppy rhythms, at other times providing a cymbal wash, but always generating a strong pulse. Alex Bonney enters on trumpet at various points, occasionally reminding me of Miles Davis’ playing on Bitches Brew.

On Loosing The Shot, Pt 1 is dominated by the drums playing over an electronic drone, while in Pt 2 the electronics become dominant creating a gentler ambiance. Pt 3 focusses much more on sound effects generated by the electronics

Pt 1 of the final track, The Unmoved Movement, returns to the mysterious mood of the first track, while Pt 2 builds up in intensity through repetition and an initial minimalist approach that becomes much stronger and more dramatic.

Muted Language (Bead 45) features a series of duets between Emil and Mark Sanders. It is a charming and delightful album with a series of 6 tracks with a different character rather than a straight through improvisation. It was brilliantly recorded by Chris Sharkey, and one has the feeling that one is sitting in the front row at a concert hearing all the different nuances in the playing. There is also a really perceptive sleeve note by Phil Durrant that gives an excellent guide to the music on the CD.

The playing throughout the album is varied with each track having its own character. At times it is very interactive with the two drummers reacting spontaneously in the moment to what the other is doing. On other tracks, e.g. Track 2, Words Not Spoken, Emil creates a big sound on the toms and cymbals which is complemented by Mark’s more detailed rhythmic reactions on his drums. There is usually an arc with the music building to a peak and then coming down. One track, Track 3, Dialectic Dialects, begins interactively, but moves into a passage that has more of a soundscape feel. Track 5, Muted Language, creates an air of mystery through the use of cymbals and small percussion objects. The final track, Parting Of Ways, is extremely interactive with each player clearly listening very carefully to what they other is doing – as, in fact, they do throughout the recording.

I’d love to hear both groups in a live situation, but in the meantime I strongly recommend these two albums.

Mike Borella (Avant Music News) on Muted Language

This meeting of two drummers is nothing but polyrhythmic goodness from the densely-packed and appropriately-titled The Opening to the slightly more sparse Diversions. Emil Karlsen is a relative newcomer to the UK free improv scene, recently arriving from Norway. Mark Sanders has an absolutely massive discography, having played with dozens of like-minded folks from both sides of the Atlantic.

Muted Language is six short-to-medium-length pieces that showcase these gentlemen on their kits as well as wood blocks and other types of percussion. One of the more notable features is how they incorporate extended techniques – such as rubbing, brushing, and scratching – into the mix in a rather seamless fashion. Another area of distinction is the heavy use of cymbals, to the point where those implements provide the main rhythmic structure while the drums are used for exploration. What you won’t hear much of is a steady beat. Karlsen and Sanders engage in a dialog and play off of one another, but do so individualistically and to the point that either’s drum track taken alone would be an interesting listen.

Eyal Hareuveni (Salt Peanuts) on ‘The Undanced Dance’ and ‘Muted Language’

light.box is the British duo of trumpeter-electronics player Alex Booney (who is also a producer and recording engineer) and bass guitarist-electronics player Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. Both are focusing on expansive electronic processing of droney, glitchy, doomy, dirty, epic and noisy improvisations. The third album of the light.box duo is a collaboration with the Norwegian, Leeds-based drummer Emil Karlsen. Bonney recorded, mixed and mastered recently Karlsen’s Spaces Unfolding quartet (The Way We Speak, Bead, 2022). This ad-hoc trio’s album was recorded at Huddersfield University in October 2021.

The title of the album, The Undanced Dance, captures faithfully the spirit of this hyperactive and highly inventive collaboration. Fractured grooves blend into dark, cinematic ambient drones and morph into spontaneous improvisations, colored by epic electronica and ornamented with raw noises. Obviously, you can’t dance with these sonic textures as there are no pulse or steady rhythmic patterns to hold to, and Karlsen’s playing is totally free, but all these eclectic and eccentric textures radiate a sense of urgent and tangible physical presence.

Muted Language is a cross-generational meeting of British master free improvising drummer Mark Sanders (on the right channel) and the young Karlsen (on the left channel), beautifully recorded by fellow free improviser Chris Sharkey in a single afternoon in May 2021. Sanders was Karlsen’s teacher at Leeds Conservatoire

The album offers six distinct and patient, intimate and free-flowing conversations of like-minded, inventive rhythmic explorers, ranging from polyrhythmic, contrapuntal dialogues to sonic explorations, including overtones and subtle shifts in timbre, often made by the swishing sounds emanating from manipulated cymbals. Fellow British free improviser Phil Durrant, who contributed short liner notes, praises Sanders and Karlsen’s immediate, musical interplay, the profound understanding of these gifted, virtuoso drummers – with no words spoken, as one of the pieces hints – as well as how their individual rhythmic dialects complement each other, each with his own extended percussive techniques. An excellent drum duo.

Ken Cheetham (Jazzviews) on Muted Language

You should know that Karlsen is heard on the left channel, Sanders on the right. There are six tracks, duets, each with its own charisma. There is, of course, a great deal of interaction, especially on the final track, Parting of Ways, in which you can almost hear each drummer listening for what the other might be about to deliver.

Polyrhythms galore seem to be the currency of the underlying structure and the proximity of the recorders to the drum kits creates a concert-like soundscape, as every nuance of the hinted undercurrents or trace of an overtone is felt as a variation to the overall resonance. The drummers’ interplay relationship is finely complementary, characterized by and demonstrating an incomparable technical skill in music. Karlsen tends towards the larger sounds produced by tenor drums and cymbals while Sanders inclines towards the finer detail.

Sanders already has many recordings under his belt as he has played and recorded with many musicians of similarly-minded, musical intellect. Karlsen is comparatively new to the Free-improv stage, here in the UK. He came from Norway and works at making a name in improvised music and Free Jazz, thoroughly reconnoitring and exploring the possible properties of the realm of the drum.

This is a very fine drum duo, whose sounds are full of diversity and always retain their musicality.

Jeph Jerman (Squidco) on ‘The Undanced Dance’

A live recording from the duo of Alex Bonney on trumpet and electronics and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay on bass guitar and electronics, here joined by Emil Karlsen at the drums. At the top we’re boxed about the ears with bone-rattling bass rumble which is quite the treat in itself, eventually joined by nimble thin-stick scatter shot percussives. A clear, unaltered trumpet adds nifty commentary and we’re off to the races. Little by little strange unique textures creep in around the edges, and the whole mass eventually dissolves into a geolithic low-end throb with tiny elbows needling. When the buzzy trumpet returns it makes perfect sense. Even more so when it splits into two distinct voices. A quieter, more concentrated collection of metallic string tumble and quickquick drumming brings us back to home. All three pieces here are broken into several parts, with appropriate track markers, so you can return to your favorite bits easily. Very thoughtful that.

“Loosing the Shot” matches low-end bombing with dying-battery air raid siren and someone fumbling through a field of twisted rebar, again leveling off after the initial sortie as the pilot’s karma rears its inevitable head. A roomful of chirping electronics buoys up some sputtering echoey horn bits. There’s some totally satisfying crunch swinging across the stereo field before things warp and thin out. A lone foghorn with burbles and some quite beautiful harmonics; ghosts of the previous five minutes.

The final statement starts with a spacey aspect, trumpet in a big concrete space with reverbed sparsity from drums and bass. Miles Davis on acid, or Jon Hassell with AMM. Sort of… This drops away to reveal loopy murmuring electrons and skipping records. Makes me think that somehow water is involved. What happens if I turn this knob?

Full article by Andrzej Nowak(Spontaneous Music Tribune) reviewing The Way We Speak, The Undanced Dance and Muted Language.

The name Bead Records should be known to all lovers of British free improvised music who are a little older, in other words, not out of the blue in this millennium. Established in 1974, the label has produced a lot of great records, but after a time of heavy prosperity, it has already experienced periods of increased inactivity.

Bead Records is doing a bit better in the digital era, it has a bandcamp website, and the last few months have brought four new productions (all also on physical media, very handy CDs). The new projects revolve around the musical activities of … young Norwegian drummer Emil Karlsen. Accompanying it, of course, is an artistically valuable haul of British masters and a whole lot of freely improvised sonic wonders.

Today we are looking at three of the aforementioned novelties – Karlsen in a trio with veterans of the scene, in a trio with progressive youth and in a duo with a drum legend. Three tasty dishes with a lot of creative percussion. welcome !

Spaces Unfolding – The Way We Speak

Flute and violin in the hands of true masters of European freely improvised music , here presented in a very clean timbre, without the support of electronics (although this violinist likes it!) and other wonders of modern times. Karlsen adds careful drumming , making the alluring narrative even more interesting and compelling. It is worth emphasizing that in the moments of dramatic accumulations and dynamic sound interactions, the improvisation of the trio called Spaces Unfolding charmingly resembles the string recordings of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble period (for the less informed, Metcalfe played with John Stevens in the early 1990s, how wonderful of many reasons of the century).

The beginning of the album is very intimate. A bit of singing phrases and a handful of string rasps flow freely carried by the stream of quick, tailor-made percussion. The sound of the trio is saturated with the echoes of the sacred building where the performance takes place. In the second part, the mood becomes even more intimate, almost post-baroque. The percussion here works very minimalistically. Over time, the story gains wind in its sails, it piles up interestingly and flashes with patches of expression. The third improvisation walks on tiptoe. Percussion brushes hum, the bow jumps on the strings, and the singing of the flute seems to be extremely filigree. The narrative is full of suspense, divided into short duets and solo expositions. Musicians are happy to work with the call & response method. With the development of the stage situation, the story becomes dynamic again, and therefore also in quality. The fourth narration, although built with short phrases, seems lively, almost dance-like, full of sensual melodics. The final improvisation focuses on dramatic subtleties – small sounds, resonating cymbals, ritual stamps formed into an intriguing braid. The whole falls into a swaying rhythm not without the participation of shorts-cuts of the violin, half-singing of the flute and small percussion actions. The last straight is imbued with a beautiful, intimate sadness.

light.box + Emil Karlsen – The Undanced Dance

The next trio is British youth and our Norwegian hero of the story. The duo of trumpet and bass guitar very successfully uses electronics here, creating a multi-colored background, neatly complementing acoustic and electric phrases, in other words, generating emotions worthy of fusion-jazz, sometimes also progressive electronics. In this company, Emil feels like a fish out of water. He splendidly drives the improvisation machine with the dynamics of his drumming , when necessary, he skillfully tones down emotions and fills in missing lines. Of the three new products presented today, this one undoubtedly deserves the highest rating.

The album consists of three improvisations, the first two of which are divided into three, and the third into two sub-stories. The first of them is inaugurated by a synthetic pulsation of the bass and acoustic drum kit. The trumpet comes into play already at the stage of a dynamic stream of good fusion action . On slowing down, we get into a stream of sounds reminiscent of live processingdrums, as well as a dense stream of ambient music. The bass guitar adorns the stitch with flageolets, and the trumpet bursts into a giant reverberation. On the plate wave of the exposition, let’s quickly enter the third part of the opening piece, which focuses on acoustics and is decorated with a nervous guitar. The second improvisation has a similar dramaturgy. We start sharply, almost with a wall of sound, only to effectively cool down emotions in the middle of the story to the level of dense ambient and definitely charming, dub climates. After some time, the drums will take the lead and, with twisted dynamics, create the rest of the recording, enriched with trumpet shouts and semi-melodies. The final fragment of the second improvisation does not spare us dark ambient, spectacular, electronic stigmas and guitar trifles. The third story consists of two parts. First, a lazy pace, a lot of acoustic phrases, flying cymbals and a trumpet, here traditionally on high reverberation. The one who imposes the right dynamics on improvisation is, of course, Emil. After a slight stop in the cloud of dense ambient music, the story kicks off, carried by a high hill and an almost symmetrical beat , half electronic, half acoustic. Music dies where it was born, in the stream of electroacoustic pulsation of the bass.

Mark Sanders / Emil Karlsen – Muted Language

As the musicians/publishers announce in the album credits , the meeting of two drummers of different generations is a kind of polyrhythmic dialogues. Sharp drummers do not forget for a moment that they play the drum kit, but they do everything during the short thirty-seven minutes at an exceptionally high level of creativity – they do not avoid interesting rhythmic solutions, prepared sounds and call & response improvisation . Let us add that Karlsen is responsible for the left flank of the narrative, and Sanders for the right one.

The first improvisation puts on typical drumming . Driven with good dynamics, time after time enriched with original decorations, even more delicious in moments of dramatic slowdown. In subsequent stories, the artists seem to show us further areas of their musical competence. At the beginning of the second part, there is a delicate resonance, small objects are placed on the snare drums, and the musicians of these puzzles create a neat, quite dynamic narrative. The third installment of the album is full of polyrhythms, but the musicians also find time to play question and answer games in the resonating glow. Another story is woven from trifles, but formed into a rhythmic sequence of events. In the fifth part, the narrative takes on the characteristics of almost ritual drumming , it is decorated with acoustics wonders from each of the drummers. The final story uses different methods of articulation – something resonates, something hums, something breathes deeply. In the mists of mystery, the final straight is born, which is conducted with great concentration, but quite dynamic steppe .