The TARFALA TRIO has its roots from 1992, meeting at the SOLO - 92 festival in Stockholm, Sweden. After that first encounter in 1992, the trio has worked sporadically and played festivals in Europe and releasing 2 Cds on Maya Recordings. This recording captures them playing live in Belgium, 2009. It is explosive, high energy loaded ferocious music focusing on low dynamic melodic material. Tarfala Trio is at their peak creating the most exciting improvised music you can hear today. This is a double limited gatefold vinyl edition only, which, as a bonus, contains one-sided 7“ EP and a booklet of photos of the musicians playing live.
BROKEN BY FIRE
LAPILLI FRAGMENTS
COOL IN FLIGHT
TEPHRA
SYZYGY
NoBusiness Records NBLP35/36 + NBEP1, 2011, limited edition of 600 records
Recorded 14th nov 2009 by Michael W. Huon at Belgie, Hasselt, Belgium Mixed and mastered by Michael W. Huon 2010 Produced by Tarfala Trio Design by Oskaras Anosovas Executive production by Danas Mikailionis and Valerij Anosov
Saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and bassist Barry Guy are each celebrated for their membership in great trios tracing their inspiration to Albert Ayler’s 1964 band: Gustafsson for The Thing, Guy for his 30-year tenure in the Parker-Guy-Lytton Trio. They share membership in another trio: Tarfala with Swedish drummer Raymond Strid. The group first performed together in 1992 and since then have gathered sporadically, releasing two CDs on Guy’s Maya label - You Forgot to Answer, recorded in 1994-95 and Tarfala, 2006. Syzygy presents a 2009 concert from Belgium, released as a vinyl-only, limited-edition two-LP set with an additional EP. Named for Sweden’s Tarfala Glacier, the group might immediately suggest the sheer auditory power for which Gustafsson is known, almost a force of nature himself. But other natural analogies will suggest themselves for the trio’s music: it can be as delicately variegated as the leaves of a forest or light on water. Strid moves from dense rhythmic overlays to featherlight cymbal shadings and almost alarm-clock rolls; Guy, the fleetest of bassists, finds ways to combine lightning-fast runs with shifting timbres and a host of extended techniques that include ‘prepared’ bass, with multiple shifting bridges. The three can create the quietest atmospheric layerings, as in the introduction to “Cool in Flight” with Gustafsson creating key-pad rhythms, but the dialogue can also launch Gustafsson on heroic expressionist episodes, from roiling highspeed runs and skittering flights into the upper register to some glacially slow, wailing passages: at one point in “Tephra”, he vocalizes through his horn with sufficient passion to suggest a man playing Picasso’s “Guernica” on a tenor saxophone. Tarfala Trio may not be a well-known configuration, but when it gets together, it’s one of the great bands in free jazz.
