Bøyning, brytning

For the Norwegian guitarist Ivar Grydeland, there’s little choice but to consider the water —living, as he does, on the peninsula of Nesodden, a short ferry ride across the fjord from Oslo. A key performer in Norway’s experimental scene with groups that include the genre-spurning Dans les arbes and Huntsville, Grydeland first enlisted acquatic inspiration on his 2012 debut solo record, “Bathymetric Modes” (Hubro), a warm, shimmering record with debts to minimalism and ambient music, modeled on the contours of underwater topography.

With his third solo record, “Bøyning, brytning” (“Bending, breaking”)—referring to how light curves and refracts—Grydeland now inquires into the waves, the myriad unpredictable ways in which they react to one another as they meet. His gambit here is a technical setup deliberately designed to elude his control: an environment of digital and analog gear, years in the tinkering, that is designed to generate erratic responses to Grydeland’s playing on a selection of guitars (pedal steel, electric, and Portuguese) and electronics. From this system, Grydeland develops a stark, glowing music that seems to originate, unhurried, from legions away, traversing peculiar angles to end up right next to the ear.

In “Bøyning, brytning,” Grydeland continues an investigation last documented in his second solo effort, 2017’s “Stop Freeze Wait Eat,” involving approaches to solo improvisation that mimic the feeling of playing with others through use of an electronic delay. On the first and longest track “Virkning av lysets bøyning” (“Effect of the light’s curving”), a quiet, propulsive 17-minute improvisation, Grydeland enlists with the Norway-based percussionist Michaela Antalová, who plays smoky rhythms alongside Grydeland’s spacious, melodic guitar.

Subsequent tracks pick up where Antalová leaves off, with Grydeland finding percussive and atmospheric counterparts within his own setup. The ballad-approximating “Fordums streng” (“Ancient string”) is crafted from its own resonance, with Grydeland distributing spacious tones that bleed freely into one another, swallowing the occasional pop. “Virkning av lysets brytning” (“Effect of the light’s refraction”) is perhaps the record’s most enigmatic track, with something of a broken machine feeling, where a melody is slit repeatedly open by a sharp, slapstick-esque pulse.

On “Ringer i ringer av vann” (“Rings in rings of water”), resonant pulses roll over chains of quiet electronic popping. In the translation-defying coda, “Snyt meg langsommere”— perhaps best described as a cheeky formulation of the phrase “Blow slowly”—Grydeland crafts a reverberant, capacious undersea room from which, just a few minutes in, we’re suddenly ejected onto the shore.

—Jennifer Gersten