They Say Humans Exist

Three musicians from three continents got together in a studio in the woods outside Oslo for two days of collective improvisation. The sounds that coalesce could be from a different place altogether, an unknown realm. Jacob Young is a Norwegian guitarist and electronicist best known for his forward-thinking releases on ECM; American zoomusicologist, philosopher and author David Rothenberg gets back to his roots as a jazz clarinettist; Sidiki Camara, from Mali, is an in-demand percussionist who also contributes balafon, kamalengoni and voice.

The music that the trio make together is, for the most part, calm and meditative; it is the feeling of an ethereal forest as spoken through wind, string and wood. Within that forest lie bluesy licks, unexpected jazz chromatics and West African melodies, as well as many other influences that float on the breeze. Through improvisation, Young, Rothenberg and Camara maintain their own musical personalities while attaining a universality that joins them together. They Say Humans Exist is an album of atmospheres, but it contains enough spiky edges to never quite dip into New-Age-iness. A more solid sense of direction wouldn’t go amiss, though.