Møster: Inner Earth

Seismic second from the Motorpsycho offshoot.

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If the 2013 debut album by Møster could be seen as an all-out audio assault on the psyche, this latest release by Norwegian sax player Kjetil Møster adopts a somewhat stealthier approach to winning hearts and minds.

A live recording, this spends a good while establishing a glowering, pensive atmosphere of shifting tonality, sulfurous distortions and refractions. Joining Møster are Motorpsycho’s Kenneth Kapstad and Hans Magus ‘Snah’ Ryan, whose caustic guitar summons up fiery, ominous rumbles and nerve-jangling shrieks against a darkly nebulous backdrop that reverberates between the mournful stateliness of Miles Davis’ He Loved Him Madly and the exotic lost world fog drifting across Pink Floyd’s Echoes. The slow build-up is entirely worthwhile as the molten core of the album erupts, generating a manic energy propelled by Nikolai Eilertsen’s galloping bass and Kapstad’s fluid drumming. The ecstatic, tumultuous climax of the 14-minute Tearatorn is but a curtain raiser for scorching closer Underworld Risk, a vertiginous ride jostled and strafed with white-hot playing and gear-crunching dynamics, like VdGG at their most potent.

Sid Smith

Sid's feature articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Prog, Classic Rock, Record Collector, Q, Mojo and Uncut. A full-time freelance writer with hundreds of sleevenotes and essays for both indie and major record labels to his credit, his book, In The Court Of King Crimson, an acclaimed biography of King Crimson, was substantially revised and expanded in 2019 to coincide with the band’s 50th Anniversary. Alongside appearances on radio and TV, he has lectured on jazz and progressive music in the UK and Europe.  

A resident of Whitley Bay in north-east England, he spends far too much time posting photographs of LPs he's listening to on Twitter and Facebook.