Electric Element

Electric Element is an unreleased electronic/jazz masterpiece from two titans of jazz and experimentation: John Surman and Karin Krog. This album is something truly special, a blend of madness and genius that will blow your mind.

It was sent to me by Karin and John after I inquired if they had any unreleased material, and I was absolutely floored by what I heard. John Surman himself had this to say about the album: "Back in 2012/13, there were talks about a grand futuristic open-air urban dance/theatre production involving 80/100 actors/dancers, lasers, and lighting effects on different stages. I was invited to be a part of it, along with Ben and Karin. We started working on ideas, with a vision of combining live music and electronica."

"Unfortunately, the project never came to fruition due to lack of funding and complexity. The recorded music we created for it sat untouched until Johnny Trunk approached Karin about releasing it, and that's how Electric Element finally found a home."

The album was born out of collaborative, improvisational sessions over a few days in the winter of 2013 at Karin and John's studio in Oslo, Norway. Ben, who worked on mixing and post-processing, used contemporary digital signal processing techniques to introduce his own aesthetic into the music.

The result is a fascinating mix of organic and artificial sound sources that will captivate any listener. For fans interested in the equipment used, Karin utilized a Yamaha Rex50 f/x unit, a Roland VT-3 Voice Transformer, and an Oberheim Ring Modulator, while John played Bass Clarinet and Contrabass Clarinet through various f/x units and a Yamaha WX5 wind synth. Ben also processed all instruments and vocals through his equipment, adding to the unique sound of the album.