Norwegian bassist, composer and producer Jo Berger Myhre has long thrived on collaboration, bringing his distinctive voice to a wide variety of adventurous projects. He is best known as one-third of the exploratory electro-acoustic trio Splashgirl and a member for the last seven years of the Nils Petter Molvær Quartet, with whom he’s recorded and co-produced two albums: 2016’s Buoyancy and this summer’s Stitches.
He’s also a frequent duo partner of multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Björn Ólafsson and has performed and/or recorded with the likes of Mariam the Believer, Jenny Hval & Susanna, Geir Sundstøl and Finland, the improvising alt-rock quartet of Pål Hausken, Morten Qvenild, Ivar Grydeland and Myhre.
Myhre made his solo debut on RareNoise with the release of the captivating and mysterious Unheimlich Manoeuvre. The title is an obvious play on the life-saving technique, though whether the added negation makes the threatening or simply subverted remains ambiguous. More to the point, the English translation of unheimlich is “uncanny” or “eerie” – an apt descriptor for the sounds that Myhre creates. To borrow a phrase from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Myhre conjures aural landscapes that suggest “a place both wonderful and strange,” stunning in their beauty with something alluringly unsettling lurking just underneath.
Inspired by the insights gained from performing Unheimlich Manoeuvre live, as documented in his second RareNoise release, Live Manoeuvres, Myhre composed the music for third RareNoise release Penta specifically for the musicians who had accompanied him on tour (Morten Qvenild, Kaveh Mahmoudiyan, Jo David Meyer Lysne). The seven pieces of Penta now combine clearly defined compositional frameworks with carefully preserved spaces for improvisation, allowing the quartet’s collective chemistry to unfold naturally. The result is a suite that merges layered arrangements, organic interplay and subtle studio craft, highlighting Myhre’s unique ability to merge compositional thinking with sonic experimentation.
