Kveldsragg

Saxophonist and composer Gisle Røen Johansen leads a quintet on three long pieces that fall into somewhere between ECM glaciers and spiritual jazz steam. What unites these two approaches is a kind of seriousness and precision, a real weightiness of mission. Johansen gets his Ayler squall in, and Evan Hermansen (from Bushman’s Revenge) guides a lot of what is left here. There is singing, on a tribute to their fellow musician Jon Klette, which somehow doesn’t bring down the genuinely emotional tenor here.