Reviews RCD2163
Similar awestruck impressions arise when encountering the music of Spunk, the Norwegian improvising quartet of nearly twenty years standing to whom close scrutiny in listening will yield great rewards ... Spunk´s element of the project is robust enough to exist without visual accompaniment. It's a jungle of chirruping hiccups and howls underpinned by sonorous churning cello, as salutary horn fanfares emerge wide-eyed from thickets of acoustic noise. A joyful celebration of Planet Earth´s infinitesimal natural wonders bridging gaps between modern classical music and improvisatory structures.
Rock-a-Rolla (UK)
SPUNK's Adventura Botanica features a quartet of voice, cello, French horn and a doubling on flute / trumpet. Composed for a dance piece, the album nods to John Cage's more fragmented works but that's about it for reference points. Spluttering brass is underpinned by shimmering cello which gives way to keening vocal overtones. Adventura Botanica is the aural equivalent of moving through a forest and hearing musical conversations fractured by the presence of giant trees acting as sonic baffles.
The Artsdesk (UK)
There´sa teeming and detailed physicality to this botanical adventure, with horns, cello and voices building a multi-layered cartoon devotional that´s rich in irrevent humor: mictrotonal bowing and ceremonial vocals are undermined by mothering and snickering: straight-faced organic drones jostle with garbled glossolalia; and lowing brass swoops and smears conjure lonely sea mammals perched on remote rocks. It brings to mind a combination of Art Ensemble Of Chicago´s more austere, contemporary classical-influenced albums such as "People In Sorrow" and the way-out non-idiomatic freedoms of underground DIY groups such as UK´s Volcano The Bear.
Jazzwise (UK)
Spunk are the four-wheeler house of the contemporary avant-garde, at least the part that protrudes heavily from the north into improvisation. Only last year they published a mammoth project, the improv session "The Well-Tempered Spunk", recorded over twelve years (by the way, we missed two of the four ladies' involuntary sex surgery - a late excuse for it). It is the singer Maja SK Ratkje, the horn player Hild Sofie Tafjord, the cellist Lene Grenager and Kristin Andersen on trumpet and flute. When you listen to it for the first time, "Adventura botanica" sounds like impro as usual, but it quickly unfolds a wonderful richness of sound and variety. In fact, it is a cooperation with the Norwegian dancer and choreographer Odd Johan Fritzøe, which focuses on the famous journey of the species researcher Charles S. Darwin to Madagascar. Similar to Darwin, who devoted himself to the study of the "invisible laws of nature", Fritzøe and Spunk turned to the search and collection of an invisible, because purely acoustic, biodiversity. What would be an arbitrary but wonderfully varied sound journey without this logical cohesion becomes a breathtakingly beautiful demonstration of what modern music based on improvisation can do. You must have heard this sprouting sound garden full of bright vowel flowers, buzzing, insectoid micro melodies and chattering vermin, which are nevertheless generated on purely acoustic instruments. Top grade. Darwin turns to Madagascar. Similar to Darwin, who devoted himself to the study of the "invisible laws of nature", Fritzøe and Spunk turned to the search and collection of an invisible, because purely acoustic, biodiversity. What would be an arbitrary but wonderfully varied sound journey without this logical cohesion becomes a breathtakingly beautiful demonstration of what modern music based on improvisation can do. You must have heard this sprouting sound garden full of bright vowel flowers, buzzing, insectoid micro melodies and chattering vermin, which are nevertheless generated on purely acoustic instruments. Top grade. Darwin turns to Madagascar. Similar to Darwin, who devoted himself to the study of the "invisible laws of nature", Fritzøe and Spunk turned to the search and collection of an invisible, because purely acoustic, biodiversity. What would be an arbitrary but wonderfully varied sound journey without this logical cohesion becomes a breathtakingly beautiful demonstration of what modern music based on improvisation can do. You must have heard this sprouting sound garden full of bright vowel flowers, buzzing, insectoid micro melodies and chattering vermin, which are nevertheless generated on purely acoustic instruments. Top grade. Fritzøe and Spunk turned to the search and collection of an invisible, purely acoustic, biodiversity. What would be an arbitrary but wonderfully varied sound journey without this logical cohesion becomes a breathtakingly beautiful demonstration of what modern music based on improvisation can do. You must have heard this sprouting sound garden full of bright vowel flowers, buzzing, insectoid micro melodies and chattering vermin, which are nevertheless generated on purely acoustic instruments. Top grade. Fritzøe and Spunk turned to the search and collection of an invisible, purely acoustic, biodiversity. What would be an arbitrary but wonderfully varied sound journey without this logical cohesion becomes a breathtakingly beautiful demonstration of what modern music based on improvisation can do. You must have heard this sprouting sound garden full of bright vowel flowers, buzzing, insectoid micro melodies and chattering vermin, which are nevertheless generated on purely acoustic instruments. Top grade. music based on improvisation can perform. You must have heard this sprouting sound garden full of bright vowel flowers, buzzing, insectoid micro melodies and chattering vermin, which are nevertheless generated on purely acoustic instruments. Top grade. music based on improvisation can perform. You must have heard this sprouting sound garden full of bright vowel flowers, buzzing, insectoid micro melodies and chattering vermin, which are nevertheless generated on purely acoustic instruments. Top grade.
Skug (AT)
For their Adventura Botanica project , which they presented at the Ultima Festival in Oslo in 2013, Spunk works with the Norwegian dancer Odd Johan Fritzøe. Spunk's stage music, which they recorded again in the studio and which moves stylistically between free jazz, free improvisation and composition, can now be listened to on this release, which is really visually impressive. In terms of program, the artists based this project on an idea by Charles Darwin, the co-evolution of two living beings, which he formulated during one of his trips to Madagascar in 1862. Spunk creates with Adventura Botanicastrong stage music that can stand on its own quite well. Everything is very pure, there is no electronic sound alienation whatsoever. The highlight of the album is probably the second number, Hepatica Nobilis , a Spunkian "Jungle song" with birdsong and other instrumental sounds of nature in the background. The musicians act through the album incredibly flexible and so fine, which is why the music never stops and always goes on. It definitely doesn't get boring here.
Freestyle (AT)
The sparking idea behind Adventura Botanica (RCD2163) was another sparking idea, that of Charles Darwin, who, anticipating Sherlock Holmes, deduced a unique fertilizer from the special nature of the Malagasy star orchid. Thirty years later it was actually found as Xanthopan morganii praedicta (the predicted), an enthusiast with an unlikely long trunk. SPUNK offered this phenomenon of coevolution and adaptation the material for a choreography for which Odd Johan Fritzøe designed the footwork and Kristin Andersen, Lene Grenager, Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje & Hild Sofie Tafjord together the music. Instead of unsightly examples such as the coevolution of human hair and, let's call it a little shameless, Pediculidae, or also of democracy and grasshoppers, they prefer to sing about the 'white water lily', the 'liverwort' and the 'mountain clover'. What explains the approaches of fresh air-drunk yodeling somewhat, but less clearly the roaring, hissing and slurping of French horn and trumpet. Or is the magic word simply: nature? As the landlady of everything animal, but also of mythopoetic beings like the nymphs, who seem to flirt here in the green, humming with bees and bumblebees. But they also use flutes and cello bows to fill their pastoral biotope with sound, while furry critters pant at their feet. Andersen plays pan and echo at the same time and simulates bubbling water. Grenager plays a little dance on the cello, Ratkje meows, murmurs and braids little ribbons from e and o, while Tafjord coos the clock of the forest rest, and almost forgot to tick the seconds. As cousins of the Rhine daughters and the Valkyries, the spunk girls are particularly 'close to nature'. Trumpet and horn mime Nöck and Zwerg. I have rarely heard Ratkje so jubilant, the quartet seldom so Sami, so grumpy, so wildly dancing. To the last breathless panting from non-human throats.
Bad Alchemy (DE)
Då trioen Spunk i 1999 kalla sitt förste album "Det eneste jed vet er at det ikke er en støvsuger", var eg hekta. Eg mine, berre tittelen, og eg my det hende på dåverande klubb Belleville i Oslo. Ikkje visste eg at dei hadde halde på sidan 1995, og eg Skal ikkje skryte på meg at eg har fotfølgt kvartetten med Kristin Andersen (trompet og fløyte), Lene Grenager (cello), Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (stemme) and Hild Sofie Tafjord ( fransk horn) gjennom alle dei åtte albuma. Men det he med forventing eg set på det niande med tittelen "Aventura Botanica" med dei tre delane "Nymphaea Alba", "Hepatica Nobilis" and "Trimfula Montanum". Og for ei saft og kraft det he på dette albumet, which det verkeleg ikkje bli saves på krutet. Det ligg i korta at dei fire er ute på oppdagarferd i sjølvaste Darwins fotefar, Urframført på Ultimafestivalen i fjor i samarbeid with a koreograf og dansar. Her lyt vi berre bruke fantasie der verket startar med mørke tonar både frå horn og strict for stemma til Kjelstrup Ratkje verkeleg utfaldar seg. If he både sterkt og vakkert, men å skildre det med ord endar berre i frasar. Vil du vere med så heng på. Spunk let seg ikkje artsbestemme. Leve spunk!
Dagsavisen (NO)