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It’s exciting to see another release from Danish guitar improviser Martin Kirkegaard; his 2020 solo album Tar Gui is a fantastic piece of work, full of melody and technique and is a mainstay on my stereo. For Molacg, Martin teams up with pianist Mikkel Almolt for three of the set’s five extended pieces, creating a spacious duet album with both players given copious room to breathe. Indeed, towards the end of the opening song, Am #1, there are both beautiful solo amplified piano melodies and freak-out jazz guitar tweaks, with neither tripping the other.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering Martin’s previous catalog, Molacg is a lengthy piece of work, with its five tracks taking up four vinyl sides and seventy-five minutes in total. The music, however, is incredibly engaging from the start, and it’s clear that space is an important element of the sound the duo are creating. Cm brings this in very effectively, with the banjo’s sharp notes colliding with odd electronic beeps and swirls, before a guitar sound akin to Sir Richard Bishop’s on Tangier Sessions comes in with some muscle. As the tune develops, Mikkel’s piano becomes more prominent and frames Martin’s flourishes with determined chords.
The last two tracks are Martin’s solo improvised guitar pieces, giving a nice contrast to the album’s first two-thirds. The first of these is Brage Blues for Iliamat in Open Landscape, which is the shorter and more intense of the two. Spiky percussive sounds evolve into a dense strumming pattern, with subtle electronic tweaks and overlays bringing a starkness to the music, which abrupt harmonics and bends accentuate. At around the halfway point, the blues is revealed more clearly, with some tasty runs and string bends diced with eastern-influenced picking. Songs like the title track from Tar Gui spring to mind, but Martin is feeling more experimental here and the result is a dynamic, probing piece that sees eight minutes fly by.
Suite for Molacg is twenty minutes on the nose and uses it to build a beautifully textured raga-esque long-form guitar piece, with the harmonica hovering behind it to bring atmosphere and texture. Martin’s playing (and Mikkel’s on his featured songs) is excellent throughout, with technique aplenty blended with a more adventurous approach to improvisation than I’ve heard from him before.
It is quite an achievement to create a double LP of sharply focused improvised instrumental sound, so hats off to these two very talented musicians for this fascinating, essential release.
Molacg (part 1 & 2) – 6th September 2024 – A DaFuGa Sounds & Makværk production
