On 'Lush Laments for Lazy Mammal', Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Håkon Stene has combined music by Britons Laurence Crane and Gavin Bryars with a new work by the distinctive Norwegian improvisational musician/composer and ECM recording artist Christian Wallumrød, who also plays on the album. Through performing these pieces together Stene has created a unique album of meditative contemporary music.
It is not necessary to take more than a quick glance at Stene's CV to realise that here is a musician with a broad horizon and a fearless attitude towards new instruments and genres. Stene has played folk music with Nils Økland and Benedicte Maurseth, electronica with Pantha de Prince and the Bell Laboratory, baroque music with Rolf Lislevand and contemporary music with asamisimasa, winner of a Spellemannspris (Norwegian Grammy).
After many years of focusing on noise-based and complex contemporary music, Stene found it important to once again be able to work with clean, simple and harmonious expressive idioms. On the album he plays, in addition to melodic percussion instruments, both piano and guitar - the latter being an instrument he had not touched for nearly 20 years.
Some listeners would undoubtedly place this music in the large drawer labelled "contemporary", but it could equally well find a natural place in the record collections of post-rock, ambient or drone music fans.
Personnel: Håkon Stene (vibraphone, quarter tone vibraphone, marimba, guitars, keyboards, piano), Heloisa Amaral, Christian Wallumrød (piano), Hans Kristian Kjos Sørensen (cimbalom), Tanja Orning (cello)
