This album is one reason why college radio exists. This is a live recording of vocalist Sidsel Endresen and guitarist Stian Westerhus from 2011 Natt Jazz Festival in Norway and while it deserves to be broadcast and experienced by anyone with the patience for it, it doesn’t fit anywhere else on the dial. Endresen performs wonderfully, shifting seamlessly from speaking to singing, from isolated glottal and plosives to the sweetest operatic voice and from language to something more than language and the fact that it’s sung in an unidentified language, the line between language with meaning and without is blurred even more. The guitar work of Weterhus blends and further disguises the work of Endresen, creating endless landscapes with swells, loops, string noise, reverb-heavy attacks that must be heard to be understood. Wooing the Oracle is possibly the most accessible and for lack of better comparison, could be described as a cross between Deerhoof, Bjork (I was going to say an Icelandic-Deerhoof, but why play coy?) and Blonde Redhead’s In an Expression of the Inexpressible.
