Nils Petter Molvær on KHMER Live in Bergen

Redefining the boundaries of jazz since the 1990s, the multi-talented Nils Petter Molvær has spent years blending the ethereal tones of his trumpet with elements of electronic, ambient and dub music. Now, nearly three decades later, Molvær returns to a previous work with KHMER Live in Bergen – a powerful reimagining of the original Khmer album, captured in a dynamic live performance that honours the past whilst bringing the music firmly into the present. Khmer was something of breakthrough project for Molvær, a landmark record that fused club beats and electronics with improvisation, which drew in new listeners from outside jazz circles.

Last month, I was fortunate enough to sit down with Nils himself to discuss the making of KHMER Live in Bergen, the evolution of his sound, and what it means to revisit such a pivotal album in his career.

Your work fuses jazz with ambient, electronic, and even dub elements. What led you to explore this hybrid sound?

I come from this island in the North-West: it has a very rich music environment and I played in many different bands. Basically, I think I always looked at music as either something I liked or something I didn't like. I was not very interested in genres… I was more ‘let all the flowers bloom’. I think this has been with me all the way through my life, so I can kind of take inspiration from anything. 

When I did Khmer the first time, I played in many different bands, especially one called Masqualero. I was also working a lot with this rock singer who has now unfortunately passed, and also with Sidsel Endresen, who is a singer and poet. I wanted to try to merge all these things that I was listening to at the time – not copy them, but kind of merge them into something organic. It's not something that I think about, it's more like something that just happens.

Speaking of the original album, Khmer was an album you released in 1997. What inspired you to revisit and reimagine the material? 

That was a very specific thing. I asked all the guys that were still around about it, and everybody wanted to join. We got together and it was such great fun, we thought let's try to do some more gigs. It's difficult, because it's a big band and pretty expensive. So we performed in the south of France, Germany, Poland and Norway. The last performance was in Bergen and we recorded this album there. At that time, I was also feeling really unwell - I didn't know what it was, but my daughter encouraged me to go to the doctor the day after recording. They took some tests, and I was put directly into an ambulance and sent down to the hospital. I was there for maybe fourteen days with a heart failure, but Jan Bang, who is a huge supporter of the band, and Sven Persson started to mix the whole album. 

Something else that I think is really important is that a label is musician-friendly: it's not only about asking ‘how many streams do you have?’, it's more about people that actually like music. I was recommended to talk to Dave Stapleton at Edition, and I'm so glad I did. The label is very musician-friendly, and Dave is even a musician himself. Hopefully we can do some more gigs on that scale, but there are also many other projects I’m working on, so I just try to balance things. I have this trio I work with, I do a lot of solo things, and I have this project called Be Quiet where I go around and play with other musicians. They come from very different platforms: cello player Anja Lechner, John Paul Jones the bass player, and Imogen Heap. For me, it's about how we kind of interact and try to create something beautiful together. In the world, there are so many different cultures and so many different ways to live your life, but we live on this planet and I think we have to find a way to live together.

Sounds like this album project is one of many for you at the moment, which must mean that you keep it musically quite diverse.

I have to be better to find a balance! If I do something, I tend to get totally sucked into it, then think ‘oh, I have to do these other things’... I want to start planning things a bit better – it's never too late! 

Did you find it was a fine balance trying to revisit that material, or was it relatively quite easy to jump back into it? 

It wasn’t a big problem at all – it was great fun! I give a lot of freedom to the musicians, and they have also developed over the years, so they come with their own different inputs. It kind of reflects the whole ensemble, in a way. That is the essential of these things: I mean, you have the platform with the tracks and the songs, but within that you can stretch out, you can go on for 20 minutes if it’s really happening in that moment. So basically, it's like a 2024-25 version of Khmer from ‘97. But the basics are there. And it's not only from Khmer, I think there are some other songs too. I just love this kind of energy: two drummers, a DJ, and a live sampling guy. The bass player is fantastic, and for the live concert we hadthe same light designer from ‘97. So we're basically together again.

I can tell that the idea of this ensemble is really important to you, and was important coming back to the project.

Oh yeah, totally. We're also really good friends – like, really, really good friends. I think that's also important when you play together, that you have that friendship. Making music together is a very intimate thing. I was thinking about that recently – to create something together like this, and to go into this totally open, it's a very intimate thing.

On this new album, is there any particular track that really stands out to you as being a significant moment, musically or emotionally?

Hm, I don't know. It's very dynamic. I mean, a thing like ‘Kakonita’, which is just me and Ivan the guitar player, to ‘Clone’ which is more like deep house, means that for me it’s just nice that it's so diverse and has this contrast. ‘Kakonita’ is based on a movie called Frozen Hot, about a little girl from Greenland. I got really interested in her, because she was taken away around the world with this Norwegian polar explorer called Roald Amundsen, and then when he became broke, he just sent her back to Greenland. I got really curious about what happened to her. So that song is fun for me. But then all of them are, in a way really. I wouldn't say there is a particular song that stands out to me.

It's been almost three decades, and your music still resonates very strongly with audiences. Do you have a suspicion as to why that might be? 

No, but I'm happy it does! Hopefully the music is not pretentious or trying to put in feelings that are not there. It's like a very deep and honest thing, to play music. To play for people, it’s something we share with the audience – we share the music itself. For me to play, it's almost like meditation; you go on stage, and for an hour and a half or two hours, you’re in that place. It’s also very important that the sound is good. I have a sound engineer that I always use, and he knows the music – he knows us – and he makes us sound great.

When you listen to the live recording now, how do you feel that your musical voice has changed or stayed the same since the original release?

Personally, I'm really, really self-critical. So I can listen to it, and can think ‘maybe I should have done something else’, or ‘maybe I should have waited there’. When I did Khmer first time around, I played a lot of instruments myself: the percussion, the bass, even a little bit of guitar, samplings – all kinds of things. Mostly the trumpet is acoustic. On this one, it's more electrified and much more in the moment. I mean, Khmer was really working on things over a long period of time. A live thing is...poof! It is what it is, so it's a totally different kind of energy. I listened to it when it was finished and mixed, and after a bit of feedback, we mastered it. So I’ve listened to it a little bit, but not a lot. I was just talking to the other guys, and they're really happy with it. I'm not very good at listening to my own albums, I must say. But listen to this album on a good sound system – it’s quite powerful. I would suggest that people don't listen to it on your phone without headsets. It's a better listen on a big sound system if you have one, or good headphones.

Is there anything exciting that you've got coming up?

I go to Haugesund to play with KHMER, and then a week after, we go to Serbia to play with the trio. I also make music for this project: it's celebrating fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War and I'm working with a photographer and a filmmaker doing an exhibition together. That’s August, and then we have a big tour with the trio. I go to Switzerland to record with The Jungle Bates, a beautiful English piano pair, an American drummer, and a bass player from South Africa. Then I'll go to Asia to play the opening of the new opera house in Hong Kong. I have to start working on Be Quiet as well, to put it together. Next year is the National Ballet that I composed the music for, and a big tour in Europe, so a lot of things are happening. I'm a lucky man.