Aside from the eerily minimal magic of her music, this ECM debut by the young Norwegian saxophonist and composer Mette Henriette Rølvåg is a classic testament to the German label’s method. Find the quietest, most privately contemplative sax debutante around, and let her make a double album that doesn’t have a title, on which nine tracks have elapsed before she emerges from evaporating sighs and high-register flutters and whispers (the recording often catches the moistness and crackle of her sax-reed) to take a decisively central role. Yet the details are fascinating: sounds not unlike an insect buzzing in the sun (the first disc features Rølvåg’s saxophone accompanied only by pianist Johan Lindvall and the sonically resourceful cellist Katrine Schiøtt), gong-like piano repetitions that draw the saxophonist out of hiding, plaintive Jan Garbarek-like sweeps. The second disc features a 13-piece band, and often sounds more composed and upfront, and thematically inviting. The set may be an acquired taste for some, but Mette Henriette is a contemporary-music star on the rise.
