Mats Gustafsson and Andreas Røysum - Vindögæ
A solid year after the previous release, Motvind Records is ready again, better suited than ever in our own opinion, to present music that we miss in our record collections, as well as music we didn't know we were missing. Behind the scenes a lot of stuff has happened, like the founding of our own distro company (Subversive Vibra ons Distribution!!!), a new and updated homepage (motvindkulturlag.no/motvind-records), several festivals, and a new magazine. And yes, we've been working on a bunch of new records that will be ready for the fall of 2023. So now we can't help but graciously invite you to dance with this first of a dozen upcoming records.
So, let’s get to work! Reed players Mats Gustafsson and Andreas Røysum bonded over common understandings of the physical and political dimensions of music. Across generations and other accountant-like statistics (zzz...), they decided in 2021 to start playing together as a duo, and thus Vindögæ was unleashed on the Norwegian audience. It was on five cold December evenings, during which the country once again was preparing for lockdown, that the sound of Vindögæ opened up to a much-limited club audience. This album consists of recordings from one of these evenings, which took place at a Nonfigurativ Musikk event at Galleri Galleberg, in one of Norway's avant-garde capitals - Tønsberg.
These seriously playful/playfully serious gentlemen are on the same vibe; a strong sense of speed and importance, paired with a kind of childlike curiosity for what lies behind the next bend. Alternating between baritone saxophone, flutophone, slide flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, phrases are repeated and elaborated, questions, answers, rhetoric, ornamentation, criticism, and free flow, all this and more can coexist when it comes from the same source.
There is a lot of commo on in this music, a lot of pressing and panting. But there are also feelings in the brutality, a brutal finesse that leads us from one sonic landscape to another. Imaginably not like a hike, more like a run through forests and scrubs, down steep slopes and up through narrow gorges. Perhaps one must, to a greater extent, let through one's animal instincts in order to understand this music, there is certainly no point in intellectualizing too much. Nor define it into one or the other booth. This music would also have been particularly complicated to notate. There is more than just lightness and darkness. No, let's end this press release here and now with a hope that you, the listener, let yourself be enchanted by these wonderful musical beings.
They define themselves as follows: VINDÖGÆ – Air being moved clear-sightedly, cleaning dusty windows to facilitate for new ways of perceiving. We who listen are grateful for the luxurious situation it is to take part in such a direct and in mate unfolding of art.
