Oddgeir Berg Trio

Oddgeir Berg Trio – While We Wait for a Brand New Day (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:21 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ozella

Finally, the Oddgeir Berg Trio has found light in its night trilogy. And this despite the fact that the album was recorded under enormous pressure and at the worst possible time. Three days before the impending lockdown, the musicians went into the studio and recorded the new material in full. It’s all the more remarkable how hopeful it sounds. This is mainly due to the post-production, in which Berg carefully went to work: “For me, it feels like a developing landscape. I have quite a lot of synths and effects pedals, but I don’t want to stuff the mix with them.“ Towards the end of the album it gets a little gloomy again. In a way, however, only a circle closes here – if you hang up “Before Dawn” again after the last note has faded away, you can just keep listening.
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Oddgeir Berg Trio – In the End of the Night (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:28 minutes | 463 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ozella

Electroacoustic jazz with one leg in melancholy and the other in ecstasy

Jazz trios named after the piano player give certain expecations, be it Horace Silver and his tender “Que Pasa” or Esbjørn Svensson and his Northern sounds, clarity and intimacy are common to these, with a hint of tonal melancholy.

These characteristics also feature on “Before Dawn”, the debut album from The Oddgeir Berg Trio, who are clearly familiar with a Scandinavian jazz tradition. Tunes such as “The Mermaid’s Dance” and “Springeren” summon images of bonfires by the sea lit to herald the summer solstice, and the inevitable turn of the season when Autumn arrives and buries its roots and turns with fine melodic lines into the silence of winter.

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Oddgeir Berg Trio – Christmas Came Early (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:26 minutes | 965 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ozella

Is this really a Christmas album? The Oddgeir Berg Trio are still playing the same familiar melodies that have accompanied us throughout the years. But this time, they’re performing them with a dedicated, trance-inducing slowness wilfully out of tune with the typical cheeriness of Christmas eve. This may not be the weirdest Christmas album ever recorded – but it most certainly ranks among the most radical ones.

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