Posted in Whathaveyou on June 30th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Swedish jammers CB3 have lined up a string of dates outside their home country for later this summer and early Fall. Starting Aug. 5 at Krach am Bach, they’ll play mostly in Germany — which I hear is how it goes — but will also support Earthless in Copenhagen, so that’s a bonus as the band supports their stellar-in-theme-and-realization 2022 release, Exploration (review here), and begins to hint at new music to come.
In April, CB3 — Charlotta’s Burning Trio, led by guitarist/vocalist Charlotta Andersson — announced bassist Pelle Lindsjö had left the band. They added Simon, either on bass and synth or just synth alongside Andersson‘s guitar and Natanael Solmonsson‘s drums, and these will be the group’s first shows in this incarnation. Hopefully someone gets good video.
The dates follow as posted on social media:
CB3 – European Tour 2023
This year we celebrate 10 years as a band/project. 10 years of experiments and exploration of music, soundscapes, improvisation and the riff.
To celebrate 10 years we will go on tour in Europe. We’re excited bring our new line-up with our incredible synth-player, bringing a big sound as we continue our space adventure for more years to come!
For 5 years of adventure we say thank you to Pelle, who has decided to move in another direction. We’ve been blessed to have you with us and wish you all the best moving forward. With that we say Welcome aboard to Simon! (#128512#) Looking forward towards Exploration part.2 and sharing some new sounds with you all!
Tourdates: 05.08 Krach am Bach Beleen DE 20.08 Spillestedet Stenegade Copenhagen DK w/ Earthless 19.09 C-Keller Weimar DE 20.09 Club VEB Hildesheim DE 21.09 TBA 22.09 Studentenclub Eberswalde DE 23.09 Schaubude Kiel DE
Thomas Moe Ellefsrud of hypnotistdesign has made this fantastic tourposter.
Shows mainly booked by Friedemann Jackalope – Artist Needs Management . Grateful for this collaboration.
We thank Kulturrådet in Sweden for making this tour possible.
Posted in Reviews on August 31st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
It seems unlikely that, if you went back seven years and asked the jazzy instrumentalist three-piece CB3 releasing the self-titled Charlotta’s Burnin’ Trio full-length what they’d sound like by the time they got to their third record, neither guitarist Charlotta Andersson nor drummer Natanael Solmonsson would be able to predict the turn wrought on Exploration. Even if you go back to 2018’s From Nothing to Eternity EP (discussed here), when the Malmö, Sweden-based outfit brought in bassist Pelle Lindsjö, it seems unlikely.
Thus it would seem that Exploration — the follow-up to 2020’s Aeons (review here) and 2021’s companion Aeons Live Session (review here), as well as the group’s first offering through Majestic Mountain Records — is a genuine manifestation of its title.
With a recording helmed by Joakim Lindberg (Malsten, Hater, Octopus Ride, etc.) and splatter-painted art by Robin Gnista, the five-song/45-minute Exploration arrives led by its longest track (immediate points) in the 11-minute “Daydreams,” and almost immediately pushes against expectation in replacing the band’s heretofore instrumental jams with vocal-topped cosmic dream grunge, Andersson‘s own voice coming to the fore to add melody and structure to the procession. It is as if CB3, having explored their way outward through increasingly psychedelic terrain over the course of their first two albums and handful of other live outings and EPs, have brought a new meaning for themselves to the titular ideal here presented. It’s almost playful. They’ve done an awful lot of exploration to this point in their tenure, but never like this.
To say the stylistic shift suits them is playing it diplomatic. Exploration holds firm to the immersive instrumental depths CB3 fostered on Aeons and its subsequent live incarnation, and brings them to someplace new and expressive. Andersson‘s voice is coated in echo and reverb, spacious and delivered languid in the tradition of some of Acid King‘s more floating stretches, and from the quick drum-fill-into-riff beginning of “Daydreams,” there’s a sense of immediacy that comes through despite the smoothness of the rolling grooves that ensue. It is a delicate balance skillfully attained, and since three of Exploration‘s inclusions top 10 minutes — that’s “Daydreams” (11:07) and the side-B-consuming closing duo “In a Rainbow with Friends” (10:42) and “Through Space and Time” (10:33) — it’s hardly as though Andersson as a songwriter has abandoned the prior spaciousness.
The embrace of structure has added to their sound overall rather than detracted from it, and “Daydreams” demonstrates this as it moves from its verse into a bassier jam/solo section, the guitar ringing out over an ever-more-solid rhythmic foundation, brightly toned and heavy in kind, accomplished enough in the playing to be prog but more interested in texture than technique, at least there, and leading into a break of standalone guitar and vocals, vague chime percussion, sitar-ish drone and a hypnotic, swelling build.
This triumph they reinforce with less than 30 seconds to go, bringing back the more grounded central riff just before ending and giving way to “To Space and Away” (8:05), the hook of which is a landmark for the album and the band in kind, picking up the grunge cues from the buzz-tone guitar in “Daydreams” and setting them into a righteously mellow tempo with repetitions about melting away into space and away and away into space and away into space and so on into another ethereal lead, build back to the verse, more melting. Some Zeppelin-ish touches emerge in the midsection jam amid a more fervent moment of chug, but by the time the song reaches its midpoint, they’ve broken it all the way down with Solmonsson‘s drums holding it together as the guitar and bass both, indeed, seem to have melted.
Just before 5:40 into the eight-minute “To Space and Away,” the guitar effects fade into the background and Andersson‘s circular lyric returns, fading in over a light strum to reignite the zero-gravity hook, full fuzz thrust, bass rumbling and drums back on board providing the push to the suitably ethereal, long-fade finish. Wrapping side A, “Going to the Horizon” (5:26) is even more straightforward, beginning with sharp start-stop hits and diving into its verse — “Going to the horizon/I see colors all around…”; the title repeats but the other lines change — to show CB3 having discovered solid ground for all their psychedelic adventures.
As with “Daydreams” and “To Space and Away,” there’s a shift into an instrumental section, as if to remind of the jammed-out underpinnings from which these songs are built — could even be the vocals were added after the fact, but the way it flows and all fits together hints otherwise — and they once again come back to the verse to round out, emphasizing the meta-exploration taking place, CB3 trying what’s for them a genuinely new approach and succeeding outright in manifesting a new stage of the band. They haven’t quite reinvented themselves on Exploration, but they’ve harnessed a vibe across the span of the album that feels very much like a payoff moment for the work they’ve done to this point.
That holds true as “In a Rainbow with Friends” moves from its post-rock bliss into a long stretch of drumless swirling drone, a solo and a gradual build, not quite so predictable as to be wholly linear, but able to provide a blueprint of structure anyway, even without the vocals. One might be tempted to call it side B branching out if it weren’t a central component of CB3‘s approach all along. “Through Space and Time” finishes by bringing together the instrumental reach with a more daring, more confident vocal — one wonders if it wasn’t the last to be recorded as well — that nonetheless summarizes the amalgam of exospheric jamming and more direct heavy rock, Andersson‘s guitar tapping through swirls as the bass and drums keep step, smoothly redirecting from the verse into a slowdown/crashout before the vocals once again step into a forward position in driving the material and shaping the impact of the finale that follows in the second half of the song, still slow, but marked by a vitality that is further representative of Exploration as a whole. They leave no doubt as to their capacity to pull this off live, which, if past is prologue, they might just choose to do on a subsequent release. If such a thing were to occur, in the parlance of our times, I’m here for it.
What Exploration makes even truer, though, is that it has become harder to predict where CB3 might go next. If one takes their progression album by album, from the standup-bass-inclusive Charlotta’s Burnin’ Trio through the psychedelic flourish of Aeons and now Exploration, they’d be believable as three separate bands despite just one lineup change with Lindsjö taking over for Jonas Nilsson on bass, and while one certainly wouldn’t mind if they followed this path forward through blending open jams and structured craft with the consistent aura of live performance as they do here, perhaps toying with the balance of one to the other as they seem to in formative fashion between the likes of “Going to the Horizon” and “In a Rainbow with Friends,” they give no indication that their whims won’t take them someplace else entirely next time. As much as the resonance of “To Space and Away,” “Daydreams” and “Through Space and Time” seems to ooze itself like so much nebular gas, CB3 are all the more exciting for wondering what might still follow. If this is them exploring — and clearly it is — then may they continue to explore.
Posted in Questionnaire on July 5th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Charlotta Andersson of CB3
—
How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I see myself as an explorer of music and art. The guitar, my pedals, composition, improvisation and jamming together with others and playing live are my tools to explore the never-ending wonderful world of experimental rock, improvisation and space rock.
It all started with playing Swedish folk music on the violin. When playing folk music, I discovered the fantastic feeling of playing together with others and to improvise when playing. Later I started to play guitar and got a teacher who was a jazz and fusion nerd, at that time I discovered improvisation for real and Allan Holdsworth, John Mclaughlin and Mahavishnu Orchestra. And then the musical journey has continued towards improvisation, heavy riffing and experimentation with sounds.
Describe your first musical memory.
Hmm…that’s a hard one. As a kid I had a lot of VHS tapes of Disney movies. I remember the intro scene from The Beauty and the Beast. It gave me chills and still does – the music is so epic.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
That’s maybe when I booked a mini-tour in Germany. And when we played at La Betto Lab in Berlin, a really cool bar/restaurant/art place run by an Italian guy. It was such a cool atmosphere and they were so nice. It was a small place and our drummer Natanael sat on a big wooden stump. It was not our best gig in the world, but it was a memorable experience.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I guess when I worked with music full-time. I realized that I needed more structure in my life and to do something else to feel good. So I also teach guitar nowadays and can combine it with doing CB3 and other interesting projects that I want to do.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I feel that artistic progression can depend on each person and their goals with their art. I think it leads to new experiences, more opportunities, friends in the scene and knowledge of the scene/music/instrument/band or whatever goal you have.
How do you define success?
When the life you live feels meaningful, is filled with love and that whatever you do feels important, meaningful to yourself and others.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Gatekeeping, bullies and other toxic people
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I would like to create music inspired by film scores, based on improvisation, synths, drums. I’ve got myself a synth and am exploring it and how I could use it together with my guitar.
Something centered around CB3.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To make the audience of the art feel something. Then to keep exploring and breaking boundaries.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 3rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
One should not doubt the word of Swedish jammers CB3 when it comes to living up to the title of their new album, Exploration. That very sensibility has been at the heart of their methodology since their outset, and even before you get to their adding vocals to their songs for the first time on the impending release, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a more fitting summary of what they do with music. Their last offering was 2021’s companion Aeons Live Session (review here) that featured live reworkings of cuts from their Feb. 2020 Aeons LP (review here), and in either setting, the band readily showcased their forward-thinking composition and burgeoning chemistry, seeming primed for the arrival-in-self that Exploration will hopefully represent.
I’ll admit that’s a lot to put on a record without actually having heard any of it. All I can say is I’ve got a good feeling here and the band hasn’t let me down yet.
The algorithm very kindly gifted me sight of the following on social media:
Majestic Mountain Records is proud to announce the signing of Sweden’s CB3 to the Majestic roster!
From Malmö, CB3 (Charlotta’s Burning Trio) have supported bands like Monolord, Kikagaku Moyo and Hällas and have enchanted the stages of PLX festival, Stockholm Jazzfestival and Köpenhamns Jazzfestival with their expansively trippy, unapologetically eclectic, and explosive space rock.
The riffs are huge, even relentlessly chugging at times, the exploration is broad yet fully focused and we’re always brought back to the same deeply atmospheric destination, an oasis of highly considered, beautifully layered and infinitely gripping trip-rock.
With stylistic references firmly in the past nodding to bands like Hawkwind, Hendrix, Cream and Pink Floyd among others, we find CB3 cutting their own futuristic path through crushing stoner territory but with shimmering forays into a dreamily explosive, shimmeringly cosmic, and mind-bending soundscape.
“We are happy to announce that we are signing with Majestic Mountain Records for our future release. It feels awesome to have friends of the scene and our band like Marco, Svempa and Vesper to do this release together with. We share the same nerdy interest for music and the same care and support of the underground music scene. When the pandemic cancelled everything, it made changes to us as a band and a new musical era of CB3 was born.
“Stoked to share this new era with Majestic Mountain Records and all of you out there!” – Charlotta of CB3
‘Exploration’ will be released this fall with the full Majestic treatment and ushers in a new era of CB3 where for the first time, vocalised lyrics are introduced into their compositions.
‘Exploration’ is the first part of a space adventure where a daydreaming character physically enters his dreams which then become reality. Heavy psych, even heavier jams, progressive rhythms and form structures promise to take the listener beyond the constructs of space and time.
Stars above, evil below and fire in between. A trinity in peace for aeons. CB3 (Charlottas Burning Trio) is here to bring you on a journey with their explosive rock jams and mind-bending cosmic soundscapes bringing the spirit of psychedelia music to the 21th century.
More Information about the release and pre-sale to come, in the meantime, please give CB3 a warm Majestic welcome.
Photo by Tove Nyberg! Follow CB3 on Instagram: https://instagram.com/cb3jams
Listen to CB3 on Bandcamp: https://cb3band.bandcamp.com/
CB3 are: Charlotta Andersson – Electric Guitar Pelle Lindsjö – Electric Bass Natanael Salomonsson – Drums
