Terje Rypdal Miroslav Vitous Jack DeJohnette
Terje Rypdal Miroslav Vitous Jack DeJohnette

Already the beautiful cover photo by the Italian Roberto Masotti hints at the atmospheres in which we will find ourselves immersed while listening to this album. A green plain overshadowed and suffocated by a spread of black clouds announcing an imminent fury, a threatening sky as only nature can be. A typical Nordic landscape, or better yet, Norwegian. Norwegian like the city where the work was recorded, Oslo (1978). Norwegian like Terje Rypdal, a guitarist of great class accompanied here by Miloslav Vitous (the first bassist of Weather Report) on double bass and electric piano and Jack DeJohnette on drums.

All these premises leave little doubt about the type of music we are going to listen to, but it is the first notes of "Sunrise" that completely dispel them. Expanded, ethereal, relaxed sounds materialize in the icy air, then the rhythm quickens, becomes ominous, like the clouds on the cover, reaches an ideal peak, and then plunges back into a soft closure for a few notes.

The next track, "Den Foste Sne", follows the same vein as the previous one, but the atmosphere becomes even more dreamy, there are no dark tones, there is only the desolate beauty of those landscapes to lose oneself in. Only in the end do Rypdal's guitar notes surface as if to awaken us from the dream.

But the dream is not over. "Will", perhaps the trio's best composition, lifts us off the ground and takes us straight into those clouds, and it is magnificent. On an ethereal canvas of keyboards, the three paint poignant notes that touch the soul. Everything seems in balance; the three musicians are in perfect harmony with each other, there is no leader, there is a fusion of sounds to create a magical atmosphere. It's beautiful to be able to fly with them.

"Believer" is a kind of transition, a preparation for the change in direction brought by a "Flight" in which calm seems to have disappeared. The Nordic gods are furious, the storm that was previously threatened has now arrived. If before Vitous caressed the strings of his instrument, now he torments and aggressively bows them, bringing out agitated, furious, nervous notes, almost as if he had a violin in his hands. DeJohnette and Rypdal follow suit, creating whirlwinds of anguished beauty. Just a little over five minutes of fury are enough to balance the apparent calm of the entire first part of the album.

But our guys seem to enjoy catching us by surprise. For the piece that closes the album, after the drama of "Flight", one would expect a return to sweet dreaming. And it is indeed a dream, but an ordeal where the sounds emitted by keyboards and guitars materialize wolves and dancing apparitions on the horizon. However, it is a romantic fear, something that irresistibly attracts us. In the opinion of the writer, "Season" is the only other piece on the album that comes close, in pathos and intensity, to the magnificent beauty of "Will". To close in style, Vitous gifts us with a shiver-inducing solo, a few seconds but divine.

I don't think it's possible to confine this album to a single genre. Is it jazz, is it fusion, is it ambient, is it psychedelia? It is all this and none of it. It is a romantic album (in the historical sense of the term) to be listened to with closed eyes, in solitude, to be transported to the immense expanses of the Norwegian steppe or to feel for a moment like Friedrich in front of a sea of fog.