Eventyr falls quite squarely into the "world music" slot of Garbarek's output; much of the material is inspired by Norwegian folk themes, though the end result sounds much more eastern. It's to the group's credit that the original material blends in with the folk themes.
Sonia Maria centres around a sax simple theme stated over a drone, Abercrombie's liquid doodles (as witnessed on his album Characters) and Vasconcelos's talking drum. This was a shocking introduction to saxophone music - I don't know what I was expecting, but this certainly wasn't it!
In Lillekort, the shaker and hand-drum set up a sprightly pace, over which Garbarek plays a jaunty tune. Abercrombie's guitar sounds almost like a high glockenspiel at times, with little bursts of sound that mirror Jan's phrasing rather nicely.
Eventyr is a two-section piece. The first section is dominated by Vasconcelos's talking drum, with sets up a mid-tempo pace. At first, there are similarities to the opening track, with Jan playing mournfully on top, but then his notes go higher and higher under he's screaming at the very top of the range. This is joined by percussion that's some kind of a cross between tubular bells and tin cans, and this takes over for what sounds like an escape party of mantel clocks. This is replaced by bird-chirp sounds, and Garbarek returns on a high flute. The combination of flute, chirps and guitar is quite effective. Gradually, rhythm is introduced through odd discordant but subtle guitar chimes (or is it some percussion instrument?) and the "liquid guitar" and flute improvise over this for a while. This would keep any lover of "natural-sounding" ambient music happy. After Eventyr, Weaving A Garland sounds relatively normal. This is akin to For B.E. on Paths, Prints: a simple but effective sax theme is played, low-register, over subtle but more-trad guitar picking, then repeated in a higher register.
For someone like myself who was still hung up on the sound-world of Sunrise from the first Rypdal/Vitous/DeJohnette album, Once Upon A Time was recognisable as a relative. However, this is really only because it has a similar "ticking cymbals" sound; over this, the guitar and sax sound nothing like Sunrise. The guitar chimes in descending chords, the sax whirls. This is perhaps the least "worldly" of the tracks.
Meanwhile, Vasconcelos's berimbau on The Companion goes to the other extreme, and Garbarek alternates between oriental pitching and something quite bluesy.
Snipp, Snapp, Snute is full of frenetic dancing triangles and curious swirling background noises. Instead of creating a dominating tempo, these form a backdrop for Garbarek to play out something of an Andean fixation on flute.
Just as I thought of Once Upon A Time as some kind of counterpart to Rypdal's Sunrise, so too did I think of East Of The Sun And West Of The Moon as a counterpart to the same album's closer, Seasons. There is some structural similarity: a wailing solo lead opening grows into a wild inner section, which finally gives way to a slow, beautiful ending. The opening sax wails atonally (something I hated at the time, but rather like now). However, there isn't really a "wild inner section"; more thematic material eventually appears, until the closing theme sneaks in on sax, almost underhand (the variations appear before the theme itself, that is). The cleanest statement of the theme is in Vasconcelos's vocal code, which is quite a beautiful ending.
As I said initially, even though I've encountered many more "worldwise" albums from Garbarek, this one still has an "other-wordly" quality, and as such is quite unique. Later "world" albums have a much stronger sax sound, which is wonderful, but it's also good to hear this more low-key version.
Mildly recommended.
(Go to Jan Garbarek album list)