Fretless Guitar : Tellef Øgrim
Trombones : Dag Einar Eilertsen
Drums and Electronics : Jacek Kochan
Voice and Audio Edit : Anne Danielsen
Electronics : Henrik Hellstenius
This recording lies well outside the "perceived normal box" in a realm above musical boundries.
Whether or not you are into the fretless guitar or ‘boundry-free’ music is irrelevant,
this CD has a lot to offer and all it requires of you is an open mind.
Tellef Øgrim’s new cd "Wagon 8" is truly a piece of art,
it deserves a place within Norway’s top "jazz" albums.
For the record, Norway is, in my view, among the greatest
nations when it comes to producing high quality, improvised music.
Tellef’s performance delivers a wide range of sounds from a softer more
"jazzy" tone to a distorted slightly twisted one, both are beautifully played.
Fretless guitar aside, he has chosen a really nice set-up to support himself.
There seems to be a natural flow amongst both the players and the tunes themselves.
Overall it is a nice ride that we are taken on, through a fretless soundscape of
samples, melodies and improvisation.
Review: Gunnar Backman
(AKA BAPMAN) & Jenny Rowell - April 2007
Editors note: Great to hear Tellef with a band, this is an outstanding album, a true landmark
in the genre, Norway should be very proud.
Some Dodos Never Die - Tellef Øgrim
Classification - Moody solo fretless
For over a year now Tellef Øgrim has publised a regular monthly piece for fretless guitar on his website
www.tellefogrim.no
Tellef has collected tracks from the first half of 2004 and published them on this CD "Some Dodos Never Die".
Tellef's work is mainly solo fretless, although there are exceptions. Here's a quick run down
of the CD....
Track One - View One; Just to ease you into his style gently. Picking quick stacatto notes, Tellef gets a
lovely tone from his fretless. And he always surprises you, just when you think the melody is on track he
jumps onto another.
Track Two - Indsur's Dream; This shows a better command of the fretless with lots of nice accurate slides,
there are many nice things about this track. One is the immensly percussive sound
Tellef gets when he hits a note hard. Almost feels like getting punched in the stomach.
Track Three - Pantograph; Faster runs and a lighter touch all round. Getting towards a real jazz feel here.
Track Four - Some Dodos Never Die; The stand out title track is more moody atmospheric and doubled tracked.
Very poignant and full of Tellef's skilful fretless sound, like a tenor Pastorious.
Track Five - March; This has a wandering walking jazz theme, I would love to hear a full production, maybe?
Track Six - There's No Such Thing as My Fretless Guitar; Originally composed for Unfretted, so we are
especially pleased to see this on a released CD. This is featured in our
Hall of Sounds with a description by the man himself.
Track Seven - Flathead Trail; Very nice effects on this work, hard to tell just what Tellef uses but its some
sort of dynamically controlled envelope.
Track Eight - Flathead Tale; A reprise of the previous track, with some eerie echo, almost as if the music
was trying to reach you from another dimension.
At a total playing time of twenty five and a half minutes, Tellef describes this as an EP, but I remember vinyl
LPs being around 30 minutes in duration. It is a very unique and personal style that Tellef brings to the
fretless guitar and this album is a testament to that.
Review - JB
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