Martin Taxt – Second Room

Sofa

The latest album from Norwegian tuba player Martin Taxt, as well as being a continuation of the work started on 2020’s First Room, comes on like the ultimate in minimalist sound as architecture.

His microtonal tuba carries single tones as if they were the most precious of cargo, listening intently for shifts in pressure and additions of further textures. Assistance comes in the form of another tuba, as well as sax, organ, bells and modular synth; but these are used so sparingly that we can still feel the air around us whether above or below.

The drift of opener “Cave vs Nest” somehow manages to focus the mind, drawing the ear into the middle distance as if we were aboard an aeroplane headed to unknown places, but with the sun reflecting on the wing, assuring you all is well and also lending a sense of freedom. The welcome addition of other textures, sometimes unexpected but always justified, allows the eleven minutes or so to pass rapidly and with enough variation.

Where the opener feels skybound, the tones on “Swelling Forms Of Domes” are much deeper and have more of a subterranean lean, with the bells adding that cavernous sense of natural vaulted ceilings stretching into darkness. Itis somehow more dramatic, with an air of tension in the slight discord. The incredibly slow sense of movement is ever reaching for the darker recesses, angled downwards towards the bowels of the earth. The moment of arrival is an exquisite shock of scattered textures that are so surprising, it causes a re-evaluation.

It is lovely how the album moves from dark to light as it progresses and the length of the four pieces here means that the true sentiments of the tracks can be fully appreciated. You can almost feel the kiss of the sun on our skin in “Paving Seen From Above”, and the whistling and bells put us firmly in the heart of some unexplored jungle, with the low resonance as the piece progresses appearing to lift us up, as if a camera were panning back to a panoramic vista way up on a mountain.

The album comes to a halt with a track which is laced with a modular synth sound that somehow affects the humanity of the piece. It feels less natural, with some of the tones so low that you can feel the vibration inside; but this is where the players are doing some solo exploration — so perhaps after all that came before, legs needed stretching in a different way.

Second Room is a fairly monumental piece of work and one that is very satisfying listen after listen; its at times cocoon-like throb is quite unlike anything else and that alone is recommendation enough.

-Mr Olivetti-