Aerial

Aspen Edities is pleased to present Aerial, the third album of the experimental quartet Oker.
Whereas their album debut Husene våre er museer (2018) and its follow-up Susurrus (2021) focused on collective and individual compositions, Aerial features two longform pieces of fully improvised music, sculpted from the recognizable acoustic sound palette that the quartet has developed across a decade of extensive touring. The titles, Aerial, Equinoctial Tide and Crepuscular Rays refer to meteorological and planetary phenomena, and in Oker’s interplay we hear light, wind, clouds, and tidal cycles transpire as shimmering, roaring, rubbing, coalescing and diverging environments of sound. The sonic stoicism and minimalism in their expression is challenged by frictioning micro-chaoses, combining to create calm, winding paths of musical detail and form. Echoing our planet and its meteorological reality, Aerial yields both consistency and perpetual change.

Oker is an acoustic experimental quartet focusing on the amalgamation of improvised and composed modes of expression. Their music combines fine-tuned tonalities, deconstructed grooves, acoustic noise and other sonic events, taking their rather conventional instrumentation as a point of departure. Textures in gradual change coexisting with responsive and spontaneous gestures create a varied but coherent musical ecosystem which can be
airy or dense, dry or blooming. A certain minimalist or stoic approach to sound production is an overarching and recurring element in all of Oker’s music, differentiating their sound from the majority of music in the field of improvised music or free jazz

Torstein Lavik Larsen - trumpet, percussion
Adrian Fiskum Myhr - double bass
Fredrik Rasten - 6- and 12-string acoustic guitars
Jan Martin Gismervik - drums, percussion

All music improvised by Oker

Recorded by Espen Reinertsen at Børsen Kulturhus on February 14th, 2024
Mixed by Espen Reinertsen
Mastered by Joe Talia

Artwork and copyright by Mareike Yin-Yee Lee (contours of consciousness – 2025)
Design by Robin Foesters