Blues? Maybe, in atmospheric terms. But not in the 12-bar, blues-rock or Delta blues sense. Or most other senses. The album title is a play on Miles Davis’ end-of-Sixties LP Bitches Brew which, at that point, was his most overt nod to the dynamics of rock music. Nonetheless, Bitches Blues doesn’t obviously use the 1969 set as a point from which to jump.
Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns are guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen, whose other band Hedvig Mollestad Trio distorts the boundaries between jazz and hard rock, organ and synth player Ståle Storløkken, familiar from Elephant9 and Supersilent as well as Motorpsycho, and drummer Ole Mofjell, who has played with Amoeba and Krokofant, and his own free-jazz trio 3 Days Of Maceration. Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns first surfaced at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival. A live double album followed. Now, this particular trio have recorded in the studio. The all-instrumental Bitches Blues features six tracks.
At its most pacific, on “For a Moment I Thought I Could Hear You” and “Limite,” Mollestad Thomassen’s guitar is filigreed, Storløkken’s keyboards are light, evoking Sweden’s Bo Hansson, and Mofjell is an understated, rippling presence. While clearly jazz, this aspect of the album could – oddly – be taken as a form of Swedish progg (sic).
At its stormiest, most explosive, on the pulverising opening title track and the, well, dynamic “Dynamax,” the album is about the interplay between each player. Here, it seems as though Bitches Blues is about playing off each other, pushing each other to new, shattering heights.
It ends with the lyrical “Recollection of Sorrow,” close-to eight minutes of sinuousness and spaciness – not so far from Sweden’s late Sixties/early Seventies space cadets Älgarnas Trädgård.
A wild ride, one which begs to be experienced in a live setting.
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