Harald Lassen - Rik (2025)

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Harald Lassen - Rik (2025)

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Norwegian saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Harald Lassen returns with RIK, a vibrant and exploratory new album that picks up the threads of his acclaimed Balans - the album that earned him a Spellemannprisen (Norwegian Grammy) - and weaves them into something stranger, softer, and more surprising. “It’s the little brother,” Lassen says. “Same blood, same environment, but making different choices.”

Across seven tracks, RIK builds a world that is both cinematic and deeply intimate. The title, taken from the Norwegian word for “rich,” gestures toward multiple forms of wealth: personal, musical, emotional, ecological. Each track title points to this too, whether it's “Lite Sted” (Small Place), “Risset i meg” (Etched Into Me), or “No Aent” (Something Else).

These aren’t just poetic abstractions; they’re coordinates on a personal map of meaning.

Lassen performs on saxophone, piano, flute, synth, melodica, glockenspiel, vocals and percussion. He’s joined by a versatile ensemble: Solveig Wang (synths, clarinet), Sander Eriksen Nordahl (guitars), Stian Andersen (bass, acoustic guitar), and Tore Flatjord (drums, percussion). Together they create a sonic landscape that moves fluidly between composed passages and open improvisation, always alive with possibility.

Album opener “Ambisiøs Luft (D.S.)”(Ambitious Air) is a sweeping, nine-minute statement, at once introspective and commanding, heavily influenced by Dmitri Shostakovich (the “D.S.” of the title). It’s a fanfare, a soliloquy, a storm. The contrasting track “Venner i N” (Friends in N) - inspired by Lassen’s Arne Næss-influenced philosophy of “N,” a space of improvisation, connection, and Nature - offers melodic complexity underpinned by subtle tension. “No Aent” (Something Else) was improvised entirely in studio, including the sax solo part which emerged in deep interplay with synthist Solveig Wang: “It was a magical moment,” Lassen recalls. “It felt like something completely different - ‘no aent’ - and to dare to do, be, or live something different … that’s a kind of richness.”

Elsewhere, “Trist Arpeggio” (Sad Arpeggio) offers a modernist lament that unfolds in motion, while “Lite Sted” is all pastoral charm and mischief, a meandering jazz caprice that recalls Scandi-folk and childhood daydreams in equal measure.
Romantikk & Rytme” (Romance & Rhythm) begins as if it might blossom into a 60s groove but blooms instead into something more delicate—a piece of baroque jazz with a twist of the surreal.

There’s a cinematic feel throughout, reminiscent of 60s European soundtracks, but it ́is not nostalgic. This is an album about the present, layered with a Norwegian sense of place and pace. Jazz here is not only a genre but a grammar for expressing both freedom and form.

Adding another layer of texture to the release are liner notes by Ivan Ave, the internationally acclaimed Norwegian rapper and lyricist. His contribution stands on its own as a miniature literary work: part reflection, part sensory essay, part mythmaking. His writing deepens the experience of RIK, articulating what the music implies: that richness isn’t about resolution or clarity, but the air between the leaves, the tension in not quite knowing.