TRACK LIST:

1.  The Return of Advokaten 7:58
2.  Rhinecliff Hotel 6:01
3.  Mats Jingle 5:02
4.  Pulse 1:59
5.  Friis 0:47
6.  Tvingle 5:52
7.  Watch Me Pleasure 3:35
8.  Hermetoast 0:20
9.  The Bosendorfer of Advokaten 11:19
10. Riff at Play 0:13
11. Truvas Rumba 5:08
12. Cry of Laika 3:43

LINEUP:

Mats Oberg – piano, analog & digital keyboards
Morgan Agren – drums; additional keyboards 
Tommy Tordson – bass  
With:
Jimmy Agren – guitar (4) 
Erik Sternberg – tenor sax (9)
Martin Sternberg – alto sax (9)
Simon Steensland – baritone horn (9)

Analysis. The booklet doesn’t specify which of the twelve tracks that the CD is compiled of feature bassist Tommy Tordson, suggesting he is a full member of the MMB, which I don’t call into question, although I can say for sure that he is absent on Hermetoast, Cry of Laika and Rhinecliff Hotel. Involving only Mats and Morgan, these three tunes strongly differ from the rest of the material, and so all shall be viewed first. Made up of a few tiny cuts, the 20-second Hermetoast is generally a track too short to be classified in any manner. Cry of Laika has a harmonica-sounding synthesizer register at its fore throughout and so comes across as a jazz-tinged folk piece. Finally, Rhinecliff Hotel is a sort of concerto for acoustic piano and drums and is a wonderful, ever-changing composition combining jazzy, symphonic and classical motifs and colorations. With the exception of Friis (an intro to Tvingle, it finds Mats emulating a brass section via a synth), the other tracks, Riff at Play (another intro – to Truvas Rumba) included, all have a full-blown sound. On the majority of those Mats usually handles two different items from his set of keyboards simultaneously, the organ – Farfisa, as far as I can determine – working as a lead instrument more frequently than any of the others. There are two more compositions that shall be described separately, Watch Me Pleasure and The Bosendorfer of Advokaten, as both somewhat fall out from what I see as the album’s prevalent style. Despite featuring quite a few eclectic jams, the first of these appears as the most disciplined creation in a way, partly because one of the synthesizer solos deployed has a cyclical, loop-like, quality to it. Not counting Pulse, which is marked with a brief appearance by Morgan’s brother, guitarist Jimmy Agren, the latter is the sole track on which the MMB is accompanied by side participants, all of whom are brass players. All over the first movement of the piece Matt plays an acoustic piano – much in the same way he does on the aforesaid Rhinecliff Hotel, with ease jumping from jazzy to near-symphonic passages and beyond. However, as soon as the other players join him the music takes an excessively improvised character, with everyone seemingly doing whatever comes to his mind right before the piece’s finale where the musicians’ joint performance gets into shape, generally speaking. Otherwise MMB works as a classic jazz-fusion trio: by pushing what is essentially jazz in a progressive jazz-rock direction, they often eliminate the border between improvisation and composition – not with any intent to make the listeners scratch their heads while trying to catch whether what they hear bears a quasi jazz or quasi symphonic character, but exclusively with a desire to please them with at once intricate and highly imaginative music. What has been said concerns each of the following pieces, The Return of Advokaten, Mats Jingle, Pulse, Tvingle, Riff at Play and Truvas Rumba, no matter that the disc’s opener (the first of these) begins as a conventional, swingy, jazz-rock opus: already its second movement finds the band accelerating its pace, after which, well, everything goes on smoothly, meaning in terms of progression, of course. The press kit offers a number of widely known, though mostly American, bands and performers as our men’s influences, but I won’t repeat those, as personally I find this stuff to be much closer to the British school of the genre, from time to time even hearing echoes of ELP and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band at their jazziest. I believe you won’t consider my vision of the matter to be wrong, let alone blasphemous, if you lend an attentive ear to the primary-style pieces, though the list of the reference points can be continued, of course. In any event, the material presented on the CD is for the most part both fresh and compelling, the highlights including the last named five tracks, and also Rhinecliff Hotel.

DVD

TRACK LIST: 

Too long to place it here 

LINEUP (Mats/Morgan Band):

Mats Oberg – keyboards, piano; harmonica
Morgan Agren – drums
Jimmy Agren – guitar
Tommy Tordson – bass
Robert Elovsson – keyboards

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Related Links:

Cuneiform Records
Morgan Agren

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