Description
'Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey' by the Eivind Aarset 4tet, features Eivind Aarset, Wetle Holte, Erland Dahlen and Audun Erlien. The album is no departure in terms of the compositional quality contained therein, as it remains gold standard. But sonically and texturally? This album features more traditional guitar sounds and techniques than can be found on almost all of his previous albums taken together, while still incorporating his signature tonal manipulations that render the guitar sound into almost unrecognisable forms.
The album traverses the full gamut of the instrument's tonal possibilities, from Joe Pass tones to ambient textural soundbeds, from blistering shredding to controlled noise and signal. The line-up is augmented by Jan Bang and John Derek Bishop on several tracks, and Arve Henriksen on one.
The compositions by turns can be straightforward instrumentals with a heavy groove, rhapsodic tone poems, quasi-ambient jazz, expressionistic campaigns of sonic annihilation, delicate variations and improvisational explorations built upon melody and harmony, and, not infrequently, a combination of any or all of the above.
