Rhythms Jazz Reviews (AU)

12k is a New York based label, specialising in minimalist and ambient music. Even so, this coupling of øjeRum, a Copenhagen pianist (real name: Paw Grabowski), with Melbourne-based trumpeter Peter Knight feels out of the box. Since stepping down from his decade-long tenure as Artistic Director of the Australian Art Orchestra, Knight has been busily fronting his new quartet TLDR, and touring Hand to Earth, his quintet featuring Yolngu songmen Daniel and David Wilfred. Now We are Branches and Leaves provides Knight the opportunity to further explore a path he’s been on for a while, fabricating long-form ambient and electronic music that – while dissimilar – inhabits a kindred topography to The Necks. In this case, Knight has found an ideal partner in Grabowski, whose mesmerising piano and synths generate a beautiful, shimmering wash across this sixty-minute improvisation. Slow-moving and muted, this music often registers as little more than a murmur, simply asking that we yield to its mesmeric flow, enter fully into its serene and dream-like state. We could categorise it as minimalism, ambient, or what have you, but it barely matters. Sure, there’s little forward momentum; instead, Knight and øjeRum explore a language of tranquillity and calmness, woven from gauzy trumpet, subterrestrial pulses, immersive electronics. While these hypnotic soundscapes share links with Max Richter’s Sleep, William Basinki’s Disintegration Loops, or La Monte Young’s drone music, Knight and øjeRum offer up their own free-spirited take, as they construct a textured, glacial journey that summons filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s mantra of ‘sculpting in time.’