Jazz
Sonic Transmissions Records · 29 May 2026
None of the six pieces on “Øyeblikk” drops below eight and a half minutes, and two pass twelve. “Trollhättan” runs twelve thirty-nine and “Min have” twelve twelve: with an hour and five minutes spread across six tracks, the record asks you to stay. Sonic Transmissions Records put it out on 29 May (STRLP65), and it is signed by two collectives at once, the Danish ensemble Caktus and the Norwegian orchestra OJKOS, sixteen musicians in all recorded at the Victoria Nasjonale Jazzscene in Oslo.
Every composition is by Maria Dybbroe, who plays clarinet and alto saxophone, and the range of her references is what keeps the record standing. “Kalvøya”, eleven fourteen, works an unsettled serenity that passes through repetition minimalism and through Wadada Leo Smith’s writing for large ensembles, and around the four-minute mark it opens up and gives way to a trumpet solo. “Stærk strøm” opens at eight forty-four and had come out as a single on 8 May. The line-up explains the sound: three trombones, two trumpets, four reeds, guitar, cello, two basses and two drum kits, with Knut Kvifte Nesheim’s vibraphone opening holes in the mass.
With sixteen names and six long pieces, the record doesn’t say who plays what. The trumpet solo on “Kalvøya” is uncredited and there are two trumpeters in the line-up; no recording dates are given either. It’s a solo worth remembering, and the record won’t tell you which of them played it: on a record that stakes everything on individual voices inside a large ensemble, that isn’t paperwork. Caktus came from Barefoot Records, with “Under Solen” (2020) and “Flimrende” (2023), and OJKOS had released on Grappa and Odin: “Øyeblikk” is the first record by the two together and the first by either for Sonic Transmissions.
Rating: 8.0/10
Text by Aina Torrents