Our new album presents new music composed by band leaders Susanna Lindeborg and Per Anders Nilsson. The music consists of fixed compositions, loose structures, and electronic backgrounds. A point of departure is to integrate acoustic and electronic instruments, where influences from a variety of genres and traditions are present, such as free improvisation, avant-garde and experimental music, electro acoustic music, minimalism, as well as electronica and ambient music. However, the music always starts from and is firmly rooted in the jazz tradition. A conscious artistic choice is to challenge the classic jazz rhythm section. Au lieu a human bass player, the bass part is performed by a virtual electronic bass player that plays either fixed figures and/or bass lines created in real time by pre-programmed algorithms, implemented on an Octatrack sampler/sequencer and a Nord Lead A1. Signs and Symbols was released April 26 2024, and is available as CD and digital. Link: https://www.naxosdirect.se/labels/lj-records-420

A taste of the album:

Signs and Symbols

Melodic Hope

Reviews

Extract from Orkesterjournalen, Sweden’s leading Jazz Magazine*

Thomas Millroth

[…] The music roars, crackles, snaps but – beyond the electronic mortal sin of sounding artificial at all costs. Lindeborg’s piano establishes figures, pumps blood into the drama that the group plays out in eleven songs. And each instrument plays its own given role. The saxophone rings desolately – dreamy perhaps the romantically inclined would say. But even though I do experience strong currents of the emotional romantic music in songs, jazz, art music when I listen, this is something more: figures are thrown in, the piano wanders thoughtfully around in the gentle soundscape and creates drama. Sometimes it feels so ethereal and whizzing that it feels as if the musicians take a bird’s eye view for a few minutes and hover above themselves and consider what it has created. […] A resounding review with electronics, freedom but still a sure decorative jazz feeling (like in an old jazz ballad where the notes tremble and the eyes are half-closed). And it is certainly beautiful. (Thomas Millroth, Orkesterjournalen #3 2024).

Reviews from Salt Peanuts, Norwegian jazz-site online

Eyal Hareuveni

The Swedish, Gothenburg-based band Natural Artefacts began twenty-five years ago as an electroacoustic, free improvised, collaborative sonic lab of electronics player-composer Per Anders Nilsson (and former jazz sax player), pianist-electronics player Susanna Lindeborg and tenor sax and electronics player Ove Johansson. After Johansson’s passing in 2015, Lindeborg and Nilsson began the new phase of Natural Artefacts, with Estonia-born guitarist Merje Kägu, sax player Thomas Jäderlund (of Cool Funeral Beer Band, and his own trio TJAT), and percussionist Anton Jonsson. This new quintet recorded its first album,The Crux (LJ, 2018).

Signs and Symbols is the fifth album of Natural Artefacts. It was recorded at Studio Epidemin in Gothenburg in December 2022 and November 2023. Natural Artefacts still plays minimalist, atmospheric electroacoustic jazz, spiced with free jazz, experimental electronica and contemporary music. Signs and Symbols offers eleven loose and open textures composed by Lindeborg and Nilsson (except one piece by Kägu and another one by Jonsson), consciously challenging the classic jazz rhythm section, and suggesting an organic integration of the acoustic instruments and the electronics. Nilsson acts here as a virtual electronic bass player who plays fixed figures or bass lines created in real time by pre-programmed algorithms, implemented on an Octatrack sampler/sequencer and the analog synth Nord Lead A1.

Now, Natural Artefacts sounds like an experimental jam band, more adventurous, more sound-oriented, with more futurist, edgy electronics, and equipped with the wisdom to conclude its open improvisation when its basic themes are exhausted. But, still, rooted in the seminal funky-jam grooves of Miles Davis Bitches Brew band, naturally, with typical Nordic lyricism and restraint. (Eyal Hareuveni, Salt Peanuts, https://salt-peanuts.eu/record/natural-artefacts/).

Allan Sommer*

You can safely call the Swedish musician Susanna Lindeborg a pioneer in Nordic music when it comes to incorporating electronics into her music. She started the group Mwendo Dawa together with her now deceased husband, the saxophonist Ove Johansson. L and J, which are the first letters of their surnames, gave birth to the name of their record company, LJ Records. From here, many records have been released with Mwendo Dawa, records under Lindeborg’s own name and then Natural Artefacts, which started as a collaboration between Lindeborg and Johansson and Per Anders Nilsson.

The group continues after Johansson’s death in 2018 with the Estonian guitarist Merje Kägu, the percussionist Anton Jonsson and the saxophonist Thomas Jäderlund. Which is also the idea behind this new record with music that mixes genres, acoustic vs. electronic instruments, compositions and improvisations.

The music is written by Lindborg and Nilsson respectively, while all those involved each have their own interlude, of a very abstract and experimental character. In general, the music is very electrically charged with ostinatos that control the rhythmic foundation. The music is completely his own, but if you were to come up with references, I would, for my part, attribute Herbie Hancock’s ”Mwandishi” and ”Soft Machine”. A quality in itself. (Allan Sommer, Salt Peanuts, https://salt-peanuts.eu/record/natural-artefacts/).

• Google translated from Swedish and Norwegian.