Strata Skúli Sverrisson feat. Bill Frisell

• 1Sweet Earth02:26
• 2Instants05:15
• 3Vanishing Point02:57
• 4Ancient Affection03:57
• 5Came to Light03:56
• 6Cave of Swimmers02:59
• 7Amedeo04:06
• 8Afternoon Variant05:13
• 9Segment03:06
• 10Her Room03:50
• Total Runtime37:45

Info for Strata

I’ve never been at a session like the one that we had in June of 2017 with Skúli Sverrisson and Bill Frisell. Sometimes you can really sense a connection between two musicians, some fitting together or a frisson of common experience and spontaneous invention. But this was of another order—a quiet and profound communion. With Skúli and Bill there’s a shared internal language—a sense of inevitable logic—hypnotizing and surreal.

The studio is a charged environment—a kinetic energy of ideas about to be born, loaded with expectation and possibility. Emotions tend to come to the surface in both good and bad ways. Bill and Skúli hit a deep vein in the first hour and never needed to come up for air. They would track a song of Skúli’s while seated across from each other, barely speaking. Then we would listen back in the control room. After the song was over, no one would say a word for a moment, as if a spell had been cast. Then Bill might look over at Skúli and say, “What do you think if I tried to overlay something on this one?” While Bill tracked a second guitar, Skúli would sit with his head cradled in his hands. When Bill would return to the control room, Skúli would lift his head, wearing a beatific smile.

This spell was only stirred once. On the second day of tracking, the film maker Jim Jarmusch came by for lunch. Jim is a longtime fan of Bill’s music. His arrival was a brace of movement and charm. He’d tell a couple of stories, and then we’d sit in silence while Bill and Skúli tracked something. “Brothers from another mother, these two,” I caught Jim muttering under his breath.

Skúli Sverrisson: “Bill’s been a thread throughout my creative life. I wrote songs for this session, but Bill has been such an inspiration to me that, even on songs I wrote before I met him, he was already there.”

Bill Frisell: “Skúli was one of those guys that I kept hearing about but hadn’t heard his music. Before I heard what he did, I was already wondering, ‘What’s with this guy?’ He had such a huge range, playing with some of my favorite musicians and in styles all over the map. The first time I heard him, the beauty of it touched me right away... I don’t listen to much music. I mostly listen to someone like Duke Ellington—real classics. But I got two of his albums and I kept putting them on. I wouldn’t have known that he was influenced by me. He was tapped in to something I dream of. When we did the recording, it took it to 100%, it felt like something that was in my imagination, but even deeper and further.”

SS: “There seemed to be a clear path to the center of the music. The session with Bill was so easy—no complications anywhere. And then having Jim Jarmusch there! He was almost like a ‘ghost producer.’ He’s another one of my heroes, such a great and surreal experience. I was only in New York for three days to record the album, and the whole thing came together so easily and to have Jim there... I really came back home and thought, ‘Did that really happen—was that a dream?’”

BF: “This was really special for me, I’d wanted to play with Skúli for a long time and this was an ideal situation. Sometimes you play music with someone in another context, in someone’s band or at a session, and you think, ‘I’d like to do a project with that person’; but this was the first time we played together. It felt so immediate, like ‘This is it, right now.’”

SS: “I knew Marc Urselli from decades ago when he reviewed a rather obscure record of mine, “Seremonie.” Later we did many tours together with Laurie Anderson, when Marc was the front-of-the-house engineer. We became friends and I felt very connected to him.”

Marc Urselli (recording engineer): “Bill and Skúli are two of my favorite musicians of all time and having them together in the studio was most enjoyable. They are both so modest and so soft-spoken that (barely!) hearing their comments and compliments to each other, one incredible take after another, was both delightful and hard to believe. Being there when the two played almost felt imposing, in a way. It was like a sacred experience only a few lucky ones were allowed to be a part of.”

BF: “Playing alone is so difficult because you get nothing back. But as soon as just one other person plays, there’s a direct response , like an electrical current that returns. It starts to go. You play something and right away it comes back, like a two-stroke engine. Everything you need is there... There’s an elegance to it. I almost feel like I didn’t even play on this record. Compositionally, what Skúli brought is so amazing. There wasn’t anything for me to do, everything was there already. So natural for me to fall into, so effortless. What Skúli chose to play and what he wrote—he built this structure that didn’t have anything blocking me but it was holding me up the whole time. It feels like we’ve known each other longer than we have. And it feels like the start of something.” – Elan Mehler

Skúli Sverrisson, electric & acoustic bass
Bill Frisell, electric & acoustic guitar

Skúli Sverrisson
is an Icelandic composer and bassist residing in New York City. Over the past two decades, bass guitarist-composer Skuli Sverrisson has worked with a veritable who’s who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Wadada Leo Smith, Derek Bailey) to music icons (Lou Reed, Jon Hassel, David Sylvian, Arto Lindsey) and composers (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Johann Johannsson and Hildur Gudnadottir). Sverrisson is also known for his work as an artistic director for Olof Arnalds (Innundir Skinni, Vid og Vid), recordings with Blonde Redhead and as a musical director for legendary performance artist Laurie Anderson.

In 2006, Sverrisson founded 'Seria', an ongoing ensemble featuring Amedeo Pace (Blonde Redhead), Olof Arnalds, David Thor Jonsson, Anthony Burr, Eyvind Kang and Hildur Gudnadottir. He released Seria in 2006 and Seria ll in 2010. Sverrisson has appeared on over 100 recordings and has performed around the world with a wide range of artists. He has been awarded 5 Icelandic Music Awards, including Icelandic Album of the Year for Seria in 2006.

Sverrisson also plays dobro, acoustic bass guitar, and charango, in addition to electric bass. He is currently music director for Laurie Anderson and tours with her internationally.

Bill Frisell
Bill’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as "the best recorded output of the decade."

Released March of ’18, Frisell’s latest album for OKeh/Sony is a solo album titled, Music IS - "Taken as a whole, the album beautifully encapsulates Frisell’s depth and range in all its meditative glory."- Chicago Reader. It was recorded in August, 2017 at Tucker Martine’s Flora Recording and Playback studio in Portland, Oregon and produced by longtime collaborator Lee Townsend. All of the compositions on Music IS were written by Frisell, some of them brand new – Change in the Air, Thankful, What Do You Want, Miss You and Go Happy Lucky – others being solo adaptations of now classic original compositions he had previously recorded, such as Ron Carter, Pretty Stars, Monica Jane, and The Pioneers. In Line, and Rambler are from Frisell’s first two ECM albums.

Frisell’s previous project, the Grammy nominated When You Wish Upon a Star also with OKeh/Sony, germinated at Lincoln Center during his two-year appointment as guest curator for the Roots of Americana series (September ’13 – May ’15). It features Frisell with vocalist Petra Haden, Eyvind Kang (viola), Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums) performing Frisell’s arrangements and interpretations of Music from Film and Television. Jazz Times described the project as follows: "unforgettable themes are the real draw here, reconfigured with ingenuity, wit and affection by Frisell and a terrific group."

"Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high concept into a humble package. Long hailed as one of the most distinctive and original improvising guitarists of our time, he has also earned a reputation for teasing out thematic connections with his music... There’s a reason that Jazz at Lincoln Center had him program a series called Roots of Americana." - New York Times

Recognized as one of America’s 21 most vital and productive performing artists, Frisell was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist in 2012. He is also a recipient of grants from United States Artists, Meet the Composer among others. In 2016, he was a beneficiary of the first FreshGrass Composition commission to preserve and support innovative grassroots music. Upon San Francisco Jazz opening their doors in 2013, he served as one of their Resident Artistic Directors. Bill is also the subject of a new documentary film by director Emma Franz, entitled Bill Frisell: A Portrait, which examines his creative process in depth.

This album contains no booklet.