*2025 stock* Beauty No Beauty is the debut of Andreas Wildhagen’s Spiralis quartet. The lineup features Kasper Værnes on alto and soprano saxophones, Anja Lauvdal on piano and synth, Adrian Myhr on bass and Andreas Wildhagen on drums and compositions. All have collaborated with Andreas in earlier projects, but this constellation is new and some of the members had never worked together prior to the recording, which was made shortly after a few days of rehearsals while everything was still fresh.

The compositions are often exploring forms that has a starting point followed by improvisation leading to a new motif, as opposed to coming back to the same. The idea was to have a setting where the musicians could play freely with inspiration from a melodic or rhythmic idea, and work their way to the next. An attitude of fluency and not looking back. To contrast this, other pieces has more of a static form and a focus on repetition. This also came as a response to having played a lot of improvised music that has change as the only constant, which all of these players are comfortable with. But the pendulum took a swing back - the most radical thing was sometimes to repeat something. Or to play something beautiful - it was spontaneous and something that wasn’t discussed, but a positive surprise.

The title of the band and the album says something about the world and the ongoing cultural and political history that we are a part of. When a musician, writer or any kind of artist offers something to the world, it has in it the potential for change, however small or big - others relate to it, elaborate and evolve it over time, in ways that are impossible to predict, in the same way this music is also in dialog with ideas from the past. An image of a spiral - something coming back to the same place in a circle, but in a different way and time, seen through a different lense.

Comparing to earlier days of our generation, there’s certainly more of a collective feeling of discomfort and chaos in the world right now. The horror and injustice that we are witnessing so massively right now. The class war led by corporations has been devastating for humanity, nature and the climate. Fascism is again on the rise, democracy is being wiped out a long with natural habitats. The world is spiraling out of control.

The title Sky Reflection in Blood and Oil captures a lot of the theme - the unnecessary despair. We live on a beautiful planet and the possibility for good and creative life is so close, yet it gets destroyed by negative forces within humanity - greed that fuels wars for the control of resources and profit for the few, while the many suffer. Hopefully more people will keep finding and engaging in powerful, beautiful and provoking cultural expressions that keeps pouring out of creative people all over, regardless of - and because of, all the murk. Music can be an instrument for changing thought patterns and revitalizing society, and coming back to a natural respect for life.