Lost River is the first recording by a trio of drummer Michele Rabbia, trombonist Gianluca Petrella and guitarist Eivind Aarset, and one of the most unusual records in the recent ECM catalogue. Ten pieces, most of them improvised on the spot, move between ambient sound, free improvisation and jazz, with electronics woven into every part. Water runs through the titles, from Flood and Styx to Fluvius and Wadi.
The three came together at the suggestion of producer Manfred Eicher. Rabbia and Aarset had played many duo concerts, and Rabbia had worked with Petrella in other settings, but the trio had never recorded. Rabbia plays drums and electronics, Aarset guitar and electronics, and Petrella is credited with trombone and "sounds". Aarset's flowing, layered guitar will be familiar from his Dream Logic project and from records with Nils Petter Molvær, Tigran Hamasyan and Andy Sheppard. The two Italians and the Norwegian recorded at ArteSuono Studio in Udine in January 2018, with Stefano Amerio as engineer. Most tracks are credited to all three players, while Aarset wrote What Floats Beneath and Rabbia Fluvius.
Leadership shifts constantly: a trombone line can sketch a melody, then sink into a bed of processed guitar and cymbal noise. Petrella, known to jazz listeners as a soloist with Enrico Rava and Giovanni Guidi, here works as much with texture as with phrasing. What Floats Beneath is the surprise, built on plain, warm electric guitar chords of a kind rarely heard from Aarset. In Night Sea Journey the narrow tonal palette makes small changes of colour feel dramatic, and repeated signals rise out of the electronics.
Peter Bacon of London Jazz News heard "a perfect triangle of rhythm, setting and melody" in these spontaneous three-way improvisations. Selwyn Harris in Jazzwise found common ground in "finely detailed yet organic ambient-sonic transformations" and called the result "a seductively atmospheric recording". Ingo J. Biermann of Nordische Musik called it an untypical album for ECM because of its closeness to ambient music, yet still classic ECM in its openness.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2609, released on 31 May 2019. The ten tracks last about forty-five minutes.
