3 out of 5

Label: Monofonus Press / Astral Spirits

Produced by: Vegard Lauvdal (recorded and mixed by)

As unproficient as I feel talking about jazz – despite having listened to a fair amount, it’s mostly modern or of my generation; I lack exposure to the classics or any kind of chatty musical theory to be able to better speak to this stuff – I feel even less so if we’re dialing in on individual instruments. Like, put some drums and horns together and I can at least string up a comprehensible opinion; but if you ask me to zero in on, say, saxophone players, I can tell you a little about Ken Vandermark, or Mats Gustafsson, or Peter Brötzmann, but a “little” is an overestimation. So with this production of solo sax work from Signe Dahlgreen, I’m truly out of my depth. I jump to Brötzmann’s “active” style of playing, but Dahlgreen is a bit more frantic; when not toot-tootaling their last breath, Dahlgreen drops into minimalist breath work that touches on the non-structure of some of Gustafsson’s stuff, but obviously I’m limited in my references, and I realize there’s likely much more going on than those two nods.

To that extent, Kunki Snuk is, at first, rather other worldly: the active playing style I reference is unrelenting, Dahlgreen hitting notes up and down in blazing succession in an almost dronelike fashion I can dig. And then when they take it beyond their capacity, huffing it out with shorter and shorter breaths; this is… unnerving. I appreciate that too.

The juxtaposition of the nigh-silence is interesting, though also where my issues with the recording peek through, as it’s minimalist to the point of purpose; it goes on for too much of a stretch, that when we return to more of the unrelenting playing, it has lost some impact.

Kunki Snuk is pretty wild in this regard throughout, Dahlgreen pursuing their muse, and repetitious or not, it’s easy to keep being pretty amazed at the lung power and speed of the performance. But the unleashed nature of it also tires, and, sticking within my references, makes me appreciate the precision and intention of Brötzmann and Gustafsson, though I realize that’s something undoubtedly learned over decades of playing – __ obviously has the skill; I wish them that same history to add that same weight to their work.