★PNL Records
Japan 2019
PNL Records and Audiographic Records are thrilled to announce the release of the seven CD boxset, Paal Nilssen-Love & Ken Vandermark: Japan 2019. This co-production includes live recordings by this long-standing duo from their 16-date concert tour of Japan, as well as new collaborations with legendary Japanese musicians: Akira Sakata (reeds/voice), Masahiko Satoh (piano), and Yuji Takahashi (piano).
The Nilssen-Love/Vandermark is an internationally acclaimed percussion/reed duo and has been in c…
Pairs Of Three
Paal Nilssen-Love Circus emerged as a direct result of the travel restrictions caused by the corona pandemic. The Oslo World Music Festival asked Nilssen-Love to put together a new band of musicians based in Norway. He came up with players from different camps, experienced in various styles: ethnic, classical, contemporary, jazz, free jazz, noise, pop etc.
The seven unique voices were gathered around common musical ideas and ways of thinking and a shared understanding of musical freedom. Each mu…
New Map
New Map is based on open-form “cells” of concrete ideas, notes and directions that the musicians had to respond to. The 22-minute title piece swings - sometimes, literally - back and forth between subtle percussive games, mysterious and sensual orchestral-chamber dynamics, anchored by harpist Krüger, accordionist Kalle Moberg and trumpeter Köster, and raw, noisy and abstract improvisations led by sax players Lea, Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, Kristoffer Berre Alberts and Finnish electronics player Tomm…
Clusterfuck
On Clusterfuck, Nilssen-Love used graphic notations. The 24-minute title piece pushes the Large Unit to urgent and ecstatic blowouts but this powerful sonic adventure is often punctuated by playful, or subtle and reflexive, improvised solos. Eventually, the Large Unit exhausts its whole energy in the explosive coda before letting Moberg and Keränen end this piece. Nilsson-Love, second drummer Andreas Wildhagen and percussionist Celio de Carvalho navigate “Bubbles” to even more intense and energe…
Time Sound Shape
"At first glance this new CD on PNL looks like familiar territory - a trio recording with two known collaborators of Nilssen-Love: Accordionist Kalle Moberg have become a steady and important voice of the Large Unit sound over the last ten years, and Frode Gjerstad truly needs no introduction - him and Nilssen-Love have played together for 30+ years.
And while this trio is a new constellation, a combination that is good news in itself, "Time Sound Shape" offers another, bigger surprise: this is …
Ethiobraz
“Ethiobraz” documents the meeting of Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit big band and Ethiopian dance/music ensemble Fendika at Molde Jazz Festival in 2018. Joining them as a special guest is guitarist Terrie Ex, who was a key component in getting making the meeting happen with his long involvement with the Ethiopian music scene. And, Paal Nilssen-Loves’s first travel to Ethiopia was with The Ex in December 2009. This changed his life. Paal’s first travel to Brazil was in June 2013. This also changes…
Stalk
Paal Nilssen-Love with Lasse Marhaug, recorded and edited by Fe-mail/Spunk Hild Sofie Tafjord to create 6 fascinating free-form compositions of sound and texture. "Marhaug and drummer/percussionist Paal Nilssen Love have worked together in Vandermark's groups, as well as being co-producers of the annual All Ears improvised music festival in Oslo. Their first recorded duet, Personal Hygiene (Utech, 2005), captured their live duet at the Nu-Music festival in Stavanger and featured their shared aff…
Events 1998-1999
In the late '90s three young musicians in the Oslo jazz scene – Paal Nilssen-Love, Ketil Gutvik and Eivind Opsvik – hooked up with two legends – Carl Magnus “Calle” Neumann and Bjørnar Andresen. Neumann and Andresen were extremely important in the development of Norwegian free jazz in the late '60s and early '70s, playing with Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen, Svein Finnerud Trio, Terje Rypdal, George Russell and many others.The project was named The Quintet and it was the meeting of two generations…
Screen Off
The high impact duo of Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) and Ken Vandermark (reeds) has been working together at an accelerated rate since 2002, and they have put out seven albums of exceptional and wide ranging improvised music since then. Though they have both worked in many critically acclaimed groups- from the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Lean Left (with Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor of The Ex) to Double Tandem (with Dutch saxophonist, Ab Baars)- they have continued to return to their duo for more…
Jikan
The trio of Scandinavian rhythm section Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) and Johan Berthling (double bass) hooking up with Japanese free jazz legend Akira Sakata (saxophone/clarinet) started in 2013 at the Molde Jazz Festival in Norway. The trio took their name from the legendary 1977 collaborative album by Yosuke Yamashita Trio and dance group Dairakudakan – an album that Sakata was a central part of, that even 40 years later stand solid as a radical and bold musical statement. And this piece of histo…
New Japanese Noise
Akira Sakata: alto saxophone, Bb clarinet, voice. Kiko Dinucci:electric guitar. Kohei Gomi: electronics. Paal Nilssen-Love: drums. Toshiji Mikawa: electronics. Produced by Paal Nilssen-Love and Lasse Marhaug Recorded live in concert at Roskilde festival 2018, Roskilde, Denmark, July 4th 2018 by Christian Brynildsen Obermayer. Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug. Cover by Lasse MarhaugFor the 2018 edition of the Roskilde festival in Denmark Paal Nilssen-Love was asked to put together two special …
New Brazilian Funk
For the 2018 edition of the Roskilde festival in Denmark Paal Nilssen-Love was asked to put together two special projects. Nilssen-Love chose to put together two groups: one Japanese and one Brazilian-based band. Nilssen-Love has for a long time been influenced and inspired by a wide range of Brazilian music, and has in the last ten years also made the connection by collaborating with Brazilian musicians and bringing his own projects to Brazil. For the Roskilde project (now to become a steady ba…
Steam In The Casa
Frode Gjerstad, alto saxophone, Bb clarinet. Jon Rune Strøm, double bass. Paal Nilssen-Love, drums & percussion. Recorded live in concert at Casa del Popolo, Montreal, Canada on the 27th of November 2015 by Mathieu Bélanger. Mixed and mastered by Frode Gjerstad. Photos by Petra Cvelbar. Cover design by Lasse Marhaug. Produced by Frode Gjerstad Trio.'Frode Gjerstad and Paal Nilssen-Love collaboration goes back to 1992 when Paal joined Frode's Circulasione Totale Orchestra as their second drummer.…
Angular mass
Koto virtuoso Michiyo Yagi joins the longstanding Norwegian duo of drummer Paal-Nilssen-Love and electronics wizard Lasse Marhaug for a session of extended improvisations. Galvanized by Nilssen-Love’s arsenal of sounds and textures, Yagi drives the most traditional of Japanese instruments to non-idiomatic and percussive extremes while Marhaug's abstractions reach heights of surprising lyricism. A veritable atlas of strange and wonderful sonic terrain, “Angular Mass” invites the listener to an un…
Soul stream
A master of reeds and horns, Joe McPhee is a bonafide free jazz icon who refuses to play the elder statesman in spite of his half-century-plus career. McPhee continues to hone his improvisatory skills by venturing far from his upstate New York home to perform with cutting-edge instrumentalists the world over. The phenomenal Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love is one of McPhee's most frequent and sympathetic collaborators. The duo's timely convergence in Tokyo with Lasse Marhaug, another Norwegia…
News from the junk yard
Norwegian drummer and percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love is one of the most prolific and hard-working musicians in the field of free-jazz, improvised and experimental music of the last 20 years. With his numerous collaborations, projects and band constellations he spends most of the year on the road, and the few days at home running his PNL Records label and organizing two music festivals. His discography is immense and displays an artist intent on documenting his activities, allowing listeners to …
Rio fun
Thomas Johansson, trumpet. Mats Äleklint, trombone. Julie Kjaer, alto saxophone. Klaus Holm, alto and baritone saxophone. Per Ake Holmlander, tuba. Ketil Gutvik, electric guitar. Tommi Kernen, electronics. Jon Rune Strom, double bass. Christian Meaas Svendsen, double bass. Andreas Wildhagen, drums. Paal Nilssen-Love, drums. Christian Obermayer, sound engineer. All music by Paal Nilssen-Love. Live at Bimhuis, Amsterdam 7th May 2015. Produced as a promo and tour record for the North American tour …
Candy
Joe McPhee: clarinet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn, soprano, alto and tenor saxophone. Paal Nilssen-Love: drums and percussion. Produced by Lasse Marhaug and Paal Nilssen-Love. Joe McPhee and Paal Nilssen-Love have played together in bands like The Thing, The Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet and Two Bands And A Legend since 2000 but in 2007 they started playing as a duo as well. PNL Records is proud to present 'Candy' a 7CD box-set that documents the developement of that duo with seven recordings ma…
Erta Ale
Paal Nilssen-Love has been one of the world's most prolific and active musicians that came out of Norway for the last 20 years. With thousands of gigs and hundreds of recordings the drummer is known for bands like The Thing, OffOnOff, Ballister, Hairy Bones, Chicago Tentet, and Original Silence, as well as collaborations with musicians like Arto Lindsay, Otomo Yoshihide, Akira Sakata, Ken Vandermark, Jim O'Rourke, Peter Brötzmann, Thurston Moore, Michiyo Yagi and many others. In 2013 Nils…
Extended Duos
The high impact duo of Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) and Ken Vandermark (reeds) has been working together at an accelerated rate since 2001, and they have put out seven albums of high octane improvised music together since then. Released now- their eighth document and the first to include guests. "Extended Duos" is a six CD, 1 DVD tour de force featuring Mick Beck (reeds), Tamaya Honda (drums), Jim O'Rourke (guitar), Akira Sakata (reeds), Masahiko Satoh (piano), and Michiyo Yagi (koto)- as wel…