Photo by: Eirik Havnes
With her latest recording, Bitches Blues, Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad plays off the title of Miles Davis’ landmark fusion album Bitches Brew. And while Mollestad certainly shares Miles’ sense of sonic adventure, she ventures even further into electronic textures and colors with her Weejuns (short for Norwegians) trio mates, keyboardist Ståle Storløkken and drummer Ole Mofjell. Featuring skronk-and-bash dynamics, the opening title track is actually something of an outlier, as much of the album is quite lyrical and introspective and a bit of a departure from Mollestad’s more aggressive trio recordings. Drenched with static-y feedback, Mollestad’s guitar on the opener sounds like industrial machinery, grinding and throwing sparks, as Mofjell’s doomy, muscular drumming responds in kind and eventually settles into an unsettling funk groove. Storløkken’s keyboards add another layer of murky resonance, and the trio never relents from its bludgeoning attack … at least on this opening track (and on the heavy groover “Dynamax”). Much of what follows, while complex and often just as uneasy, is surprisingly self-reflective and melodic; the gorgeous “For a Moment I Thought I Could Hear You” and “Recollection of Sorrow” are deeply moving. Mollestad, a graduate of the Norwegian Academy of Music, has performed with the likes of Nels Cline and Ingrid Laubrock, and like those adventurous artists, contains multitudes of musical expression.
