Molecular Gastronomy

now down to the duo of ian ballamy and thomas strnen, food looks to be more active than ever. this, their fifth album, was recorded by jeremy cox over a period of two years and mixed by ashley slater, who also contributes on three tracks. maria kannegaard plays fender rhodes on five tracks. stornen was always an important writer in food and its fair to say that a good amount of their earlier output was written as opposed to improvised. 'molecular gastronomy', however, is mostly improvised, much in the same way as the music of stornens other duo humcrush. considered to be one of the most inventive norwegian drummers, he is here closer in approach to what hes doing in humcrush. down to a duo, its also natural that ballamys role is expanded, giving more room to this quite excellent player. food was formed at the 1998 molde international jazz festival when the profiled english sax player iain ballamy was invited to perform with three exceptional young norwegian musicians. it soon became clear that the blend of lain's distinctive saxophone and arve henriksen's breathy trumpet textures was the perfect foil for the entrancing bass and drum trips created by mats eilertsen and thomas stornen. they knew immediately that they wanted to play together regularly and since then freedom and creativity became watchwords for their music. iain ballamy is without doubt one of the great british sax players of his generation. a founder member of bill brufords earthworks and loose tubes, he has also played with leaders such as gil evans, john taylor, dewey redman and george coleman, among others. thomas strnen is not your average drummer, being a prominent writer and sometime producer in most projects hes involved in. in addition to food, he is a founder member of parish (with the great swedish pianist bobo stenson) and humcrush (with supersilent synth wiz stle storlkken) and has his own solo adventure pohlitz. he has also written music for string quartet, to be performed in november by the esteemed mcfalls chamber quartet. maria kannegaard is a superb pianist with three trio-recordings to her name. she has also taken part on a number of norwegian jazz recordings. ashley slater played with ballamy in loose tubes in the late eighties and went on to form freakpower with norman cook (fatboy slim) and has since played with sam rivers, hugh masekela, elvis costello and many others.