Hedvig Mollestad announces new album Ekhidna

Norwegian prog/jazz guitaruist Hedvig Mollestad has announced she will release her new album, Ekhidna, through Rune Grammafon on July 3.

The new album, whose title is taken from the half woman, half snake creature of Greek mythology, sees Mollestad abandon her traditional Trio format for a three-woman, three-man line-up, featuring Elephant9 drummer Torstein Lofthus, percussionist Ole Mofjell, keyboard players Erland Slettevoll (The Core) and Marte Eberson (Highasakite) and trumpet player Susan Santos Silva (Mats Gustafsson ́s NU-ensemble).

The music for Ekhidna came from Mollestad being invited to perform at Vossajazz, the annual Norwegian festival and to write the commission work for 2019. The full festival version was edited, sharpened and recorded from scratch in a studio.

Mollestad is keen to stress that Ekhidna "is not a concept album as such, but loosely tied to themes of human struggle and being a mother in times when our increasing inability to live in harmony with nature paints a bleak picture."

Hedvig Mollestad: Ekhidna
1. No Friends But The Mountains
2. A Stone's Throw
3. Antilone
4. Slightly Lighter
5. Ekhidna
6. One Leaf Left

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.