In a Q&A before this show, Splashgirl pianist Andreas Stensland Løwe was, in a quiet and unassuming way, making the point that his music was not jazz. Indeed, the band’s biography cites their primary influences as being the likes of Earth and Sunn O))). Their new album Pressure has even been produced by Randall Dunn, who has perfomed the same role on albums by those two bands, such as The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull, and Monoliths and Dimensions respectively. But listening to the young, softly spoken Løwe, you couldn’t help but doubt that he was about to start shredding some black metal drone up there. If he was about to tear up the jazz rule book, the Pizza Express Jazz Club would probably have been an odd place to start.

But jazz is, by definition, a fluid musical form whose boundaries are not static. For all those protestations, this is most definitely jazz – but a very slow, sparse, quiet and playfully experimental take on it. As such, on record it isn’t even that unique: one listen to Pressure and, as fine as it is, you’d almost certainly have them pegged as a Norwegian piano trio, one that is probably signed to Rune Grammofon (and you wouldn’t be far wrong – Pressure is in fact released by Hubro). In this venue it was particularly difficult at times to extract the gossamer light touches of piano keys, gentle brushes of drums, and light bass scrapes from amongst glass clink and air con hiss: yet it refused to allow itself to be treated as background music or dinner (ugh) jazz. It’s very restraint drew you in to its patiently-created narrative, building a tension that even a blundering waiter’s untimely vocal interjection couldn’t quite dispel (here is an idea: why not just leave the pepper on the table, and people can help themselves, eh?).

They worked through most of Pressure here tonight, but really got inside the individual pieces, took them apart, interrogated them, found out what made them work, before reassembling and stretching them out. ‘Concerning The Square’ slipped out of its mooring amongst Steve Reich-influenced reverberations, drifting into an extended section of arco bass and mallet interplay, with Løwe plucking at his piano strings. It finally faded out amidst ghostly memories of its earlier forms, a bowed cymbal signalling the end, its squeak like a finger tracing round the rim of a glass of sangiovese. Some electronics within ‘Creature Of Light’ hinted at Varese’s tape-based experimentation, before a painstakingly slow bass solo creaked out like flakes falling from rusting metal.

At the heart of everything was Løwe’s ruminative piano, which drew in the aforementioned classical influences, but wrapped them in jazz idioms: you could hear a lot more Christian Wallumrød and Paul Bley in this than Dylan Carlson and Stephen O’Malley, that was for sure. His skill lay not just in what he played, but in what he didn’t. He used repetition to great effect, making phrases seem loaded with import, pulled melodies from clouds of clusters, and created vast spaces heavy with silence. He added the more unusual tonal colours (via electronics and what looked like a lo-fi keyboard), and dictated the pace, or what there was of it. He may be overplaying his hand somewhat by saying that this isn’t jazz, but he certainly has an ace or two up his sleeve.

Photos by Tim Ferguson.

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