Blixt live at Moers 2013

Here's a full performnce of this power trio at last year's Moers festival in Germany. The announcer draws the power trio lineage as far back as Cream, a band that always left room for long stetches of improvisation, even though their repertoire was song-based. This lot, though, is fully improvisational throughout, or at least, that's how it sounds. Raoul Björkenheim has worked in the trio format before, notably with the Scorch Trio which has been inactive lately and Bill Laswell played in the Painkiller trio with John Zorn and Mick Harris. We'll get to the Scorchers in due course. The name, meaning lightning in Swedish, does sort of indicate what they're up to.

I saw them last year, on the same tour I think, and recorded the entire thing on the cell phone, but listening to the playback, quickly realised that a cell phone can't handle the sonic barrage of these gentlemen. Of course, listening and watching this video is hardly any substitute for watchng them live. The propulsive playing of drummer Morgan Ågren betrays his background in prog and metal which was to some extent a defining characteristic of Painkiller which in fact  released some of their work on metal labels. Anyhow, here's a set of loudness interspersed with quieter passages, but not for too long. I happen to like the quiet parts better, but that's just me.

Blixt
Moers Jazz Fest
Moers Germany
May 18 2013

Webcast>Jaksta>Flv>You

This is the Arte live Webcast of Blixt's red hot performance at moers

Raoul Björkenheim Guitar
Bill Laswell bass
Morgan Ågren Drums

Technical point: This video is in the flv format and it works well with the VLC player. I should add that the action starts at the eight minute mark. Ideally it could have been cut shorter, but I don't have the requisite software for that.

Kudos to "punkjazz" at the Dime site for grabbing and uploading.
To be ferociously enjoyed, as always.