3 October 2007

The morning of the 21st meant a drive back to Oslo for our final show of the tour, which was to take place at Mono. As always, the plan was to play without a P.A. Usually this is perfect, but the club looked like it was going to be really loud, after all it was Friday night at a rock venue. About ten minutes before we started there were only about six people in the room and it seemed that smalltown’s gamble of putting our music in front of a different crowd was going to be a bust. Fifteen minutes later, however, and the place filled up nicely- the tour was going to end on a really good note. After the concert was over we spent the night keeping busy, it was important to celebrate all we accomplished before we split up and went our separate ways… Special thanks to Ingebrigt for his great work putting the tour together and to Joakim Haugland for putting out “The Point in a Line.”

There was one more show to play before leaving Scandinavia- a duo concert with Paal Nilssen-Love, also at Mono and also organized by smalltown, on Saturday 22nd. During the day beforehand I went with Ingebrigt to check out an exhibition of photos by the Japanese artist, Daido Moriyama, from the 1960s and 70s. Absolutely incredible stuff and I left the gallery intent on finishing up a new roll of film, completely inspired by his images. As I walked around Oslo looking for shots to take, I accidentally stumbled across a piece by Richard Serra in front of a museum; a nice echo from the time spent in New York about two weeks before. The gig with Paal went into motion in typical fashion- Paal flew in from New York that morning after being there to play a show with the Globe Unity Orchestra, subbing for Paul Lovens. We played a full bore 40 minutes and an encore, charged despite being tired from the flight (in Paal’s case) and celebrating my birthday early, the night before (in my case). In some ways the duo with Paal reminds me of a rock gig, not so much for the rhythmic approach, but with the energy that drives us forward. Mono has free, 6pm gigs each Saturday and that helped draw a packed room for the show which was a definite success. We’re looking forward to our next tour which will take place in the U.S. and Canada next June. After the concert I spent some time catching up with friends I don’t get to see nearly enough, also hashing out ideas about the trajectory of the record industry and technology with Martin Revheim, then staying up until 4am with Paal as a way to get ready for an early morning plane to Amsterdam to meet Ab Baars so we could start rehearsals with his trio for our tour together in Europe… All of it seemed to make sense at the time.

-Ken Vandermark, Amsterdam, 10/3/07