Dans les arbres is the first album by the Norwegian-French quartet of the same name, and the ECM debut of the clarinettist Xavier Charles and the guitarist Ivar Grydeland. It is a record of all-acoustic improvisation in which clarinet, banjo, piano and percussion often sound electronic, and the results can seem composed. ECM hears echoes of John Cage and the New York School.
Grydeland and the percussionist Ingar Zach, two of the main movers in Norwegian free improvisation, contacted the pianist Christian Wallumrød after hearing his ECM album Sofienberg Variations. The four have worked as Dans les arbres since 2004. Charles plays clarinet and harmonica, Grydeland acoustic guitar, banjo and sruti box, Wallumrød piano, and Zach percussion and bass drum. The album was recorded in July 2006 at Festiviteten in Eidsvoll, Norway, with Thomas Hukkelberg as engineer. Discogs credits the group as producer, and all eight pieces are signed by the four players.
The titles name states of torpor and reserve, from La Somnolence and L'Indifférence to La Froideur and La Retenue. The music moves slowly and quietly, built from breathed, plucked and struck details rather than melodies or solos. Writing in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Stefan Hentz described a clarinet tone held as a pedal point under the band, Grydeland's prepared banjo and ghostly harmonies found inside the grand piano. On L'Assoupissement, the ECM Reviews blog heard something like "a mournful gamelan for the inner sanctum". Elsewhere a piano motif may be overtaken by percussion or by overblown clarinet.
In The Wire, Andy Hamilton admitted that a first listen placed the disc in the unclassified category, and that a second showed "a most extraordinary and compelling achievement". He ranked it among the finest improv releases of recent years on any label. The Free Jazz Collective gave it five stars in April 2008, calling it "highly unusual, extremely beautiful, utterly bizarre while still being accessible". In Fono Forum, Tilman Urbach named Cage's prepared piano as the godfather of these fine sound mobiles. The quartet returned to ECM with Canopée.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2058, first released on 15 April 2008, in a jewel case with O-card and a 20-page booklet.
