Norwegian innovator, trumpeter and producer Nils Petter Molvær presents Be Quiet – a duo collaborative album built across nine tracks with nine distinct artists including Imogen Heap and John Paul Jones, recorded in cities spanning Bangkok, Rome, Berlin and London. Across landscapes of electronica, ambient textures and jazz improvisation, Be Quiet unfolds as an intimate, spatial set of recordings - built on proximity and contrast, where different cultures, disciplines and sonic identities meeting Molvær’s unmistakable trumpet voice.

The sophomore leader date from Norwegian trumpeter, composer, and sonic architect Nils Petter Molvaer marks a definitive and historically crucial turning point in the late-twentieth-century evolution of electro-acoustic fusion. Released via the esteemed ECM Records imprint, this landmark conceptual production expands brilliantly upon the pioneering structures of his debut, seamlessly dissolving the lines that traditionally separate live contemporary jazz improvisation from hyper-modern underground electronic rhythms. Molvaer surrounds his fragile, heavily mutated trumpet phrasing—frequently filtered through an array of digital delays, harmonizers, and vocoders—with an imposing, industrialized rhythmic framework built out of dark ambient synthesizers, precise turntablism, aggressive loops, and deep drum-and-bass grooves. The resulting soundscapes alternate effortlessly between moments of stark, meditative vulnerability and heavy sonic tension, delivering a deeply influential masterwork that redefines the parameters of modern Scandinavian future-jazz design.

Quiet Fire is the new album from British producer, musician and Edition Records founder Dave Stapleton – a beat-based jazz record shaped by rhythmically-driven, loop-focused production with the feel of a live band. Centred on Rhodes, bass and drums, the music sits in the space where jazz, instrumental beats and atmospheric electronica meet, drawing on a shared lineage that runs through early Bonobo, Jon Hopkins, Yussef Dayes, BADBADNOTGOOD, Kamaal Williams, Richard Spaven and Alfa Mist. His first album under his own name in over 12 years, Quiet Fire reflects a move towards beat-led writing, loop-based structure and a producer’s mindset rather than a traditional score-driven process.

Norwegian trumpeter and sonic architect Nils Petter Molvaer presents Khmer Live in Bergen – a charged reinvention of his era-defining 1997 ECM release KHMER – recorded in concert in 2024. Fused with live trip-hop beats, ambient haze and Nordic lyricism, KHMER Live in Bergen amplifies a new energy with deeper grooves, sharper edges and greater dynamic intensity, pushing the music into a rawer, driven by experience, control and creative vision.

Out on 6 October, the music for Certainty of Tides was initially recorded with the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra with Nils Petter Molvaer as a soloist in 2020. He had asked several wonderful Norwegian composers to arrange a set of music from his back catalogue. “Have a listen to the recordings I did with the orchestra and tell me what you think” he told Norwegian composer, musician, and producer Jan Bang. Since the original recording was close mic’ed for broadcasting purposes, Bang saw an unfulfilled potential in the material due to lack of space in the initial recordings. Bang came up with the idea of re-amping the mixes playing the music through speakers in a concert house followed by re-recording of the result through distant microphones. With 76 speakers (one per instrument) carefully placed exactly like the orchestra would have been seated onstage, Certainty of Tides was recorded from microphones strategically placed in the large hall of Kilden Concert House with phenomenal acoustics.

The music of Norwegian trumpeter/Nu Jazz progenitor, Nils Petter Molvaer, has always been cinematic. Call it music for a non-existent movie or a film of the mind, Molvaer's albums, beginning with the groundbreaking Khmer (ECM, 1997), have always been about aural landscapes evocative of highly personal imagery and plenty of club-ready grooves. Even in performance, the lighting provided by Tord "Prince of Darkness" Knudsen is intended to provoke the imagination rather than focus attention on the musicians. It's no surprise, then, that Molvaer has been recruited to provide music for film. His score for the 2005 French film Edy already saw limited release on Molvaer's Sula imprint the same year. Re-Vision culls four pieces from Edy and, by combining them with music from two other films—the 2007 German film Hoppet and 1999 Norwegian documentary Frozen Heart—and one non-soundtrack piece, fashions a continuous 46-minute suite that stands independently as yet another highly visual piece, incorporating Molvaer's ever-expanding frames of reference. Re-Vision is also Molvaer's first release in years to not primarily feature members of his touring band, but guitarist Eivind Aarset remains a fundamental part of its overall soundscape.

The French/Martinique percussionist Mino Cinelu and the Norwegian trumpet-player Nils Petter Molvaer got together for an outstanding piece of music.They were reflecting their roots: Sula is the island from which Molvær stems, Madiana is a synonym for Martinique, where Cinelu’s father comes from. “SulaMadiana” combines all which is perceived as trusted, familiar, and achieved, with a notion of sounds beyond the horizon: glittering, shimmering, and always promising.

Nils Petter Molvaer has built over 20+ years a huge body of work that has explored the parameters of recording studio and electronica jazz ranging from dance-beat to ambient. At the centre of it all is his extraordinarily intimate and expressive trumpet, a post-Miles player who has truly staked out his own territory, taking that Miles influence to another dimension. Re-Vision is neither beaty nor ambient, but decidedly meditative. These were pieces originally written for film soundtracks but they are far more structured than many 'cinematic' offerings and stand up strongly as music alone.
NPM's main collaborators here are DJ/producer/recordist Jan Bang and guitarist Eivind Asrset, both central forces in the Norwegian electronica jazz scene…

Nearly three decades into his career, Norwegian experimental jazz trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær is, more than ever, a genre unto himself. While the influence of Miles Davis is undeniable, Molvær has created his own language on the trumpet, haunting and intimate, immersing the instrument in electronic trickery, with heavy use of mute. The band here is largely the same as that which played with Molvær on his last album, 2014's Switch, which is obvious in the smooth, relaxed, almost telepathic interplay between them, but on this record there's a distinctly different feel. The electronic flourishes that were distinctly audible on Switch have largely gone, though no doubt there is still all manner of subliminal studio trickery taking place…

A reduction in personnel rarely results in a broader musical expanse, but that's just what happened to Food, since trumpeter Arve Henriksen and bassist Mats Eilertsen departed in 2004. Molecular Gastronomy (Rune Grammofon, 2008)—Food's first duo recording, though the use of guests fleshed the group out to a trio—was Food's most accessible album to date, without sacrificing any of its inherent risk and sound of surprise. Quiet Inlet—Food's first for ECM, and featuring Austrian guitarist Christian Fennesz on three tracks and Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer on four—follows Molecular Gastronomy's path, but remains equally traceable to earlier albums, including Food's quartet swan song, The Last Supper (Rune Grammofon, 2005). Even as a duo, Food generates a lot of sound. Strønen, in particular, combines bastardized drum kit, hand percussion and technology into a distinctive soundscaping approach, from pulse-driven to textural; spatially ethereal to jagged and dense. Ballamy's more economical playing is equally key in establishing a group sound, and based on its performance at Punkt 2006, Food could easily have continued on as a duo, but increases the unpredictability quotient by introducing a third player to the set.