Aspen Edities

Aspen Edities presents Aerial, the third album by Norwegian experimental quartet Oker. The album consists of two long-form, fully improvised pieces, shaped from the band’s distinctive acoustic sound world developed over a decade of touring. Inspired by meteorological and planetary phenomena, Aerial unfolds as a shifting landscape of light, wind, and tidal motion. Release date: 27 February 2026
Edition: 250 hand-numbered

Personnel
Torstein Lavik Larsen – trumpet, percussion
Adrian Fiskum Myhr – double bass
Fredrik Rasten – 6- & 12-string acoustic guitars
Jan Martin Gismervik – drums, percussion

Artwork: Mareike Yin-Yee Lee
Pre-order available now.

Coming September 12th: the third album by Poor Isa — the banjo-and-woodblock duo of Frederik Leroux and Ruben Machtelinckx — joined by legendary saxophonist Evan Parker and percussionist Ingar Zach.

Pre-orders are now available in our webshop.

In the meantime, enjoy this beautiful video by Oona Libens.

Program:

Frederik Leroux: solo guitar
Poor Isa (Ruben Machtelinckx and Frederik Leroux)
-
Fredrik Rasten: strands of lunar light release concert (with Ruben Machtelinckx)

From the album 'words were coming out our ears' by Graden/Agnas/Landin/Bromander

Johan Graden: piano
Nils Agnas: drums
Pär Ola Landin: bass
Vilhelm Bromander: bass

Artwork and copyright by Liesbeth Van Heuverswijn

I envision this music as emanating from a moon inhabited by otherworldly life forms and ecosystems; these sounds as evoking the moon’s topographies, beings, lunar rivers, and strands of light — as if this moon’s essence were itself sonic, vibrational matter.
Musically and acoustically, strands of lunar light departs from a set of tones corresponding to a confined harmonic series segment of a very low fundamental frequency: 5.15 hertz. Through twelve continuous sections, each employing various methods of activating openly tuned guitar strings, the music is sculpted from the twenty-four pitches corresponding to harmonics 24 through 47 of this fundamental frequency.
At times, the natural second (octave) harmonics of the open strings are activated and introduce a secondary, octave transposed version of the original harmonic...

In 2019, ‘porous structures’ was released, the first album by the quartet Machtelinckx/Badenhorst/Cools/Gouband. The album won the Klara for ‘Best Belgian Jazz CD’.
In September 2024, ‘porous structures II’ will be released, a new album by a quartet led by Ruben Machtelinckx, this time in the company of Fredrik Rasten, Frederik Leroux and again Toma Gouband.

What remains is the choice for acoustic and fragile sounds, comprehensible to the listener but with an underlying tension and complexity. New is the intertwining of acoustic guitars. While the first album played with silence, ‘porous structures II’ plays with textures. The melodic voice is exchanged for a group sound in which individuals are barely distinguishable. The classic roles in an ensemble are abandoned...