Before Dawn Oddgeir Berg Trio

• 1 Mermaid's Dance 05:31
• 2 Oldies 04:23
• 3 Here comes the toughest 03:58
• 4 Springeren 05:10
• 5 Waltzie 04:38
• 6 Slattesven 01:46
• 7 A.C.M. 04:27
• 8 Ganger 03:54
• 9 Slogro 04:42
• 10 Lullaby for S.O. 03:20
• 11 Postlude 05:14
• Total Runtime 47:03

Info for Before Dawn

In the past, the members of the Oddgeir Berg Trio have remained in the background, acting as instrumentalists for renowned Scandinavian colleagues. With the release of Before Dawn, things are about to change. Their album instantly ranks as an excitingly different entry into the long list of piano trios. And despite their decades of combined experience, it sounds every bit as fresh and hungry as you’d expect from a debut.

The sound of Before Dawn was sculpted at a very special place, the band’s very own Bonker Studio in Oslo. Entering into this barely 30 square meters small space without windows and secured by a heavy metal door, feels like boarding a submarine. It has given the studio a reputation as one of the most unique recording venues, a sanctuary far away from the worries of everyday life and the pressure of expectations. All that counts here is the music.

It makes perfect sense, when Berg quotes legends such as Keith Jarrett and McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and EST as influences and inspirations. After all, it is precisely the link between the past and the present, the tension between tradition and progression, which turn the album into such an exciting proposition. Berg, Wisløff and Blomvik may not enjoy standing in the limelight. With material like this, though, they may soon have to get used to it.

Oddgeir Berg, piano, keyboards
Karl-Joakim Wisløff, double bass
Klaus Robert Blomvik, drums

Recorded 21–22 April 2016 at Bonker Studio
Recorded, mixed by Oddgeir Berg
Mastered by Hans-Jörg Maucksch, Pauler Acoustics
Produced by Oddgeir Berg and Dagobert Böhm

Oddgeir Berg Trio
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.

The trio has some other tricks up its sleeve though, most importantly an urgency for action, pace and adventure, best heard in "A.C.M" and "Slogro" with their rhythmic relocations and aggressive radiance. Here the Oslo based trio has more in common with Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson than Scandinavia’s Jan Johannson. The Jimi Hendrix rock sound of the doublebass and the propulsive drum sound energetically support Berg’s playing. Berg’s curiosity in experimenting with Wurlitzer\Rhodes and synthesizer sounds sneaks into the soundscape and lends a distinctive colour to the sound panorama.

This album contains no booklet.