Reviews:

In Dutch we have the beautiful word 'onthaasten' which means to slow down, literally to 'de-speed', not to be pulled in all directions by obligations, appointments, tasks, chores, commtiments and assignments. It means that you get rid of all external pressure and enjoy the moment. 

You absolutely need that state of mind to fully appreciate Swedish modern composer Magnus Granberg's approach to music. We have reviewed his compositions for his Skogen ensemble before. Now he's treating us to one composition performed by two different ensembles. 

The original piece "Come Down To Earh Where Sorrow Dwelleth", was composed in the spring of 2019 for Ordinary Affects, a Boston-based experimental ensemble, consisting of Morgan Evans-Weiler on violin, Laura Cetilia on cello, Luke Martin on electric guitar and J.P.A. Falzone on vibraphone. 

As it's title suggests, this is not upbeat music. The composition is a calm, slow, carefully paced improvisation around structural and melodic concepts. In a way Granberg's composition creates a sonic space to inhabit. As a listener you do not only listen to it, it surrounds you, it engulfes you, it creates the sonic environment in which you can just 'be'. Little extended sonic elements appear and disappear, like smoke, and little percussive particles drip like rain across the ethereal space. Light and almost intangible patterns appear in slightly shifting forms and the pace is so calm and the sounds so minimal that each tone gets a special weight, almost paradoxically. Needless to say, that all instruments are played with a level of mastery that betrays the instrument's intended sounds. That by itself makes the album worth listening to. 

The original album gives a recording of one of the last performances of the tour, at the Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. 

Granberg was invited at the Ftarri Festival in Japan in November of the same year. He reworked his composition for a Japanese ensemble consisting of Miki Maruta on 20-string koto, Ko Ishikawa on sho, Toshimaru Nakamura on no-input mixing board, and Magnus Granberg himself on prepared piano. The performance is shorter, 52 minutes instead of the original's 75 minutes. 

Both performances are worth listening to, and obviously there are differences, if only by the instrumentation, with possibly a more piercing sound of Nakamura's no-input mixing board somewhere halfway the composition creating a sense of unease instead of calm. 

So take your time, and listen to two different versions of the same composition, relax and enjoy two hours of great music. 

Stef Gijssels, Free Jazz Blog

If you’re reading this, you’re probably the sort of music nerd who listens to composers like Magnus Granberg and wonder how their compositions might sound in different configurations. It’s partly intellectual and creative curiosity, but there’s also that frustration that much of the great music we hear is so often left open to interpretation and yet never heard again beyond the original version. Granberg’s music is a good example, as his string of recordings and performances present extended pieces that are heavily dependent on the colouration of their instrumental palette and a sustained, consistent mood. For the wider audience, each piece is strongly identified with the ensemble which plays it.

Well, now we get to choose – or, more likely, get both and get judgemental. Meenna has released two recordings of Granberg’s Come Down To Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth a few months apart. The first version was recorded on its premiere tour in April last year by Ordinary Affects; for the second version Granberg joins a Japanese trio in Tokyo the following November. I listened to the second version first, because it’s twenty minutes shorter than the earlier version and I had to be somewhere else in an hour. Granberg’s prepared piano threads its way through the sustained instrumental texture here as it has on other occasions, but he has revised his piece to suit an entirely new ensemble, setting traditional Japanese instruments (Ko Ishikawa’s sho and Miki Maruta’s koto) against Toshimaru Nakamura’s feedback electronics. Nakamura also appeared on Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost earlier this year; electronics have often figured in Granberg’s music but on that occasion I noted that it sounded “more abrasive and confrontatial” than before. Here, with a much thinner, sparser texture, the feedback becomes a more distinct, even intrusive presence. At rare moments, a sudden percussive burst of noise punctures the surface. There are extended periods where it settles into a high tinnitus whine. The electronic tones reflect off the sho, while the koto and muted piano pair off with short, stifled sounds. It’s the strangest, starkest work I’ve hear by Granberg yet, almost reduced at times to complete stillness. Speaking as an increasingly old and grumpy man, the high-pitched stuff started to irritate at times.

I attributed this to the instrumentation, but this theory was quickly disproved when I heard the original version of the piece played by Ordinary Affects. These are the guys I heard in Michael Pisaro’s Helligkeit, die Tiefe hatte, nicht keine Fläche a while back. This time, the ensemble is a quartet (Morgan Evans-Weiler, violin; Laura Cetilia, cello; Luke Martin, electric guitar; J.P.A. Falzone, vibraphone) plus Granberg’s piano. Even with the extra musician and the fuller timbre of the instruments, it’s a stark, strange piece. This time the vibraphone provides the backdrop as often as not, with a faint, tremulous hum. The strings work supposedly as foreground, but play with frail, reticent bowing gestures. The piano is as likely to provide an interjection as much as the electric guitar. Any obvious figuration comes from a confluence of these small sounds and, at certain moments, work in consort to produce passages of fraught continuity and stability. At other times, sustained sounds all disappear and the momentum falls away, leave holes of silence to open up in the musical texture. The certainties from the older Granberg works are fading out; in its own sinister way it’s the most changeable of his compositions I’ve heard yet and, with that small shift in equilibrium, opens up a wealth of disturbing connotations kept dormant in his previous music.

Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill

Ever since Ist Gefallen In Der Schnee, written by Magnus Granberg and performed by his group Skogen, was released to great acclaim on Another Timbre in 2012, the label has issued a steady trickle of recordings by the Swedish composer. Only a couple of Granberg albums on INSUB have bucked the trend—one a composition commissioned for the Insub Meta Orchestra, the other by a quartet comprising Skogen's Anna Lindal on violin, Granberg himself on piano plus INSUB's d’incise and Cyril Bondi. So, it was somewhat surprising when two new albums by Granberg were issued by the Japanese label Meenna, within months of each other, both featuring the same Granberg composition, but in two different versions by two different ensembles, one American, the other Japanese...

The composition was entitled "Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth" and had been written by Granberg for the American violin-cello-guitar-vibes quartet Ordinary Affects which, since 2017, had recorded two albums for Editions Wandelweiser, one with Jürg Frey, the other with Eva-Maria Houben, as well as an album for Elsewhere, also with Frey. Like other Granberg compositions, this one took its title from an older piece, in this case borrowing lyrics from "Ye Sacred Muses," a song written by the English Renaissance composer William Byrd on the death of Thomas Tallis; as with past Granberg pieces with borrowed titles, even though the song may have inspired the composer, there is no obvious borrowing of music from it.

In April 2019, Ordinary Affects went on a short US tour, with Granberg on prepared piano, as a guest member. The start of the tour saw the premiere of the piece, and the end the recording heard here, a seventy-five-minute performance recorded at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

Given the previous histories of Ordinary Affects and Granberg, it is no surprise that their music together is subtle, spacious and solemn. With a preponderance of sustained notes, the soundscape is uncluttered throughout, with every nuance audible enough to be savoured. The five players are equals with no one of them dominating. In particular, the piano and vibraphone work well together, not getting in each other's way but adopting complementary roles which contribute to the music's air of mystery and solemnity. Overall, the album's atmosphere can easily become extremely habit forming.

By November 2019, Granberg had revised the composition for sho, koto, prepared piano and electronics. On November 8th 2019, the version heard here was recorded at GOK Sound, Tokyo, Granberg playing prepared piano with Ko Ishikawa on sho, Miki Maruta on koto and Toshimaru Nakamura on his customary no-input mixing board; the following day, that quartet appeared at Tokyo's annual Ftarri festival. The membership of the quartet is unsurprising; it should be remembered that Nakimura had been a member of Skogen that recorded Ist Gefallen In Der Schnee back in November 2010, with Ishikawa also being a member when the ensemble recorded the follow-up Despairs Had Governed Me Too Long in November 2012.

Notably, this quartet's recorded version of the piece is twenty-two minutes shorter than the Ordinary Affects version. While the soundscape is markedly different from the US recording, with Nakamura's electronics being prevalent, but Granberg's piano fulfilling a similar role, the overall mood and atmosphere of the piece remain constant.

Although they are different in significant ways, the two versions of this composition complement one another perfectly, each shedding light on the other. In the end, no listener should feel that they have a choice to make between the two; both are equally desirable and should be considered as the two parts of a double CD (or download as each CD is a limited edition). As essential as all of Granberg's works. Beautiful.

John Eyles, All About Jazz