Label: ILK Music, 2025

Personnel - Mark Solborg: guitar, electronics; Susana Santos Silva: trumpet; Simon Toldam: piano, keys; Ingar Zach: percussion, vibrating membranes.

Danish-Argentine guitarist and composer Mark Solborg offers nine aesthetically compelling avant-garde chamber pieces that leave a bold imprint due to their originality. While the written sections are well-considered, the improvisation unfolds confidently from the fabric of each composition, insidiously performed by his Tungemal quartet, featuring Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, Danish pianist Simon Toldam, and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach.

Emitting melancholic and dark sounds, “Spoke” feels like a meditation on loss and grief. It’s layered with dismal piano chords, lachrymose trumpet lines sculpted with emotional fragility and enchanting effects, and understated guitar coloring. “Southern Swag” thrives on an offbeat prepared piano pulse which, accompanied by precise percussion, forms the bed over which Solborg and Silva deliver reassuring melodies in parallel. The guitar solo is alluring, marked by unanticipated note choices.

The group keeps listeners hooked with “The Wires”, in which Solborg’s meditative acoustic guitar stands out against the moody background. There’s a simultaneous embrace of anguish and tranquility here, yet “Cantamos” brings more optimistic tones without ever feeling cathartic. Its 4/4 arpeggiated riff is supported by sizzling percussion and extra bass notes that provide a cushioning foundation. “Planes” returns to a spatial, rubato desolation that immerses the listener in an imperturbable state of languidness.

“Janus - Og Sidste Ord”, the longest track on the record at nearly 11 minutes, opens with metallic percussion, introspective guitar fingerpicking, and synth consistency, passing through a buzz-soaked stillness suddenly populated with clear piano raindrops. It all ends in atmospheric haze with Zach’s vibrating membranes and subtle key changes. The album winds up with “Pitches & Peace”, a softly mantric act co-composed by Solborg, Toldam, and Silva. The latter, employing extended techniques and pixelating her own ideas with varying degrees of timbre and pitch, steps into the foreground.

Tungemal, which means idiom or tongue, is deeply connected to communication and diversity. For all its risk-taking approach and keen sense of atmospherics, Solborg’s neatly-organized yet intriguing project deserves attention.

Favorite Tracks:
02 - Southern Swag ► 03 - The Wires ► 04 - Cantamos

Mark Solborg: guitar; Herb Robertson: trumpet.

mark-solborg-herb-robertson-tuesday-prayers

Mark Solborg, a distinctive Danish/Argentine guitarist with a quirky sound, and Herb Robertson, an American trumpeter known for his free-mindedness and avant-garde punches, joined at Koncertkirken, an old church located in downtown Copenhagen, to fully embrace this duo recording.

The performance occurred on a Tuesday evening in 2014, and the album got the appropriate title of Tuesday Prayers. This worshiping music is celebrated through a variety of forms: fresh contemporary psalms, supplicant hymns, and fervorous invocations.
Solborg and Robertson already had recorded an album together in 2009 entitled Nod.

“The Flute” was the ideal choice to open. It’s a cute short piece in which Robertson plays a pennywhistle, a six-holed woodwind instrument typical from UK and Ireland. The shrill sounds in addition to the beautiful dissonances of Solborg’s guitar, takes us to distant and impenetrable Asian forests.

In “I Know You”, Robertson enters with the same determination, this time on trumpet. He spreads that characteristic sound that populated many albums from the alternative jazz scene of the 80's and 90's, not only as a leader but also as a sideman of accomplished authors like Satoko Fujii, Gerry Hemingway, Mark Helias, Marc Ducret, and Tim Berne. Here, his authoritative phrasing finds the perfect accompaniment in Solborg’s string bends and devoted chords.

We are taken into another stratosphere in “Hymn”, a sort of Indian reverence that combines expressive trumpet murmurs with dotted guitar notes.
The longest tune of the record is the title track, a sometimes-burbling, sometimes-contemplative 17-minute exultation whose abstraction is increased through a trumpet solo that oscillates between hoarse and strident, and the subsequent unruffled textures delivered by the guitarist.

“Shout, Landscape and Goodbyes” offers exactly what the title suggests. While Robertson fierily shouts complex melodic lines at first, Solborg joins him later, maintaining an active layer of distortion while exploring possible melodies.

The ones who pray have their methods and rituals, and Solborg and Robertson also found their own. There’s a transcendental harmony that surrounds them and facilitates the attainment of a perfect balance.

Favorite Tracks:
02 – I Know You ► 03 – Hymn ► 04 – Tuesday Prayers