Niklas Barnö, Joel Grip & Didier Lasserre - Snus

Phillip McNally, Cadence Magazine

Snus is a Swedish form of tobacco snuff, clean and neat but dangerously addictive. On Snus, it is also a Swedish trio of drums, bass, and trumpet. I list the instrumentation this way to emphasize that this is no trumpet with rhythm section date. While Barno plays with a great open horn sound, often with torrents of notes and some amazing tonguing, he’s not the center of the show but part of the trio. Frenchman Lasserre on drums is the equal in energy and invention of Bennink, notably at the start of “Water” using every edge, rim, and tip of his kit to keep the trio swinging, while bassist Joel Grip makes impressive use on “Salt” of scraping and grinding the strings. He reminds me of the great Mike Bisio’s eclectic approach to bass. “Smoking Flavor” is for me the strongest piece on Snus, as the bass walks and then runs through a range of colorful percussion, accompanying tasty muted trumpet lines commenting on the bass work. All in all, this is another fine addition to the Ayler catalog.