It’s nowhere spelled out on the minimalist packaging of this Okkadisk limited edition but I gather FME is short for “Free Music Ensemble.” Caught live at a February 2002 gig at Stockholm’s Glenn Miller Cafe, the trio comprises two Americans (Ken Vandermark and Nate McBride) and the young Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, a fresh name on the free-music scene who has over the past few years already accumulated a substantial discography, including a pile of discs with Vandermark. The CD’s opening and closing tracks, “Lasko” and “Stran”, are the longest pieces and are of a similar cast, both being extended one-chord jams (“Stran” is essentially stripped-down R&B). Vandermark’s tenor is gruff and proudly formulaic, punching out minimally varied riffs and rarely straying far from the tonic. He is rhythmically and harmonically very foursquare; the real action is often with McBride and especially with the phenomenal Nilssen-Love, whose tumultuous playing removes any sense of 4/4 lockstep. “Ecorce” and “Person” are quiet out-of-tempo ballad features for Vandermark’s clarinet and McBride’s bowing; they serve as useful programmatic interludes between the blowouts, though (to be frank) they’re sort of dull. The first five minutes of “Kopstoot” is an unfortunately overextended drum feature – on this showing Nilssen-Love is a more in his element as an accompanist than as a spotlighted soloist. But the track ends strongly with a brief but fiery free-jazz workout which finds Vandermark in pungent form; in the middle of his tenor solo he gets hung up on hooting the same note with clockwork regularity, but that aside it’s a nicely turned blow. It ends rather abruptly, which is a pity.

This is not a bad date by any means, but it is one-dimensional and oddly lightweight. Vandermark’s fans will doubtless want it, especially given the cachet of the limited edition (which is restricted to 760 copies). But it does not seem to me a disc with pressing claims on the uncommitted listener.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, June 2003