"ensamseglaren" - Anna H�gberg Attack - F�nstret 2025

Anna H�gberg Alto Saxophone
Elin Forkelid Tenor Sax
Niklas Barn� Trumpet
Maria Bertel Trombone
Per �ke Holmlander Tuba
dieb13 Turntables
Alex Zethson Piano
Finn Loxbo Guitar + Saw
Gus Loxbo Double Bass + Saw
Kansan Zetterberg Double Bass
Anton Jonsson Drums
Dennis Egberth Drums

In 2020 Anna H�gberg put her widely celebrated band Anna H�gberg Attack on hold, retraining as a nurse whilst continuing a solo practice and playing in other groups. With Ensamseglaren she makes a spectacular return with her own ensemble — this time a double sextet — performing an album length suite of new music written in dedication to her late father — the titular &ensamseglaren& pictured on the LP cover as a young boy.

(ensam in Swedish can mean both alone and lonely, seglaren = the sailor).

Shot through with renewed energy and a brutally affective emotional punch, H�gberg�s formal experimentation opens up vibrant possibilities for the assembled musicians to let loose with some of their wildest and most ecstatic playing on record.

H�gberg�s contention with grief leans into collective joy as method of mourning — the big band as extended family; where bonds are made through a shared experience of being together. Where everyone gets to be themselves without expectations of who they should be or what they can do. It�s a radical commitment to care — of her self and others — that animates and unifies this suite of music�s radical dynamics and variations in colour: from whisper-quiet textural intensity to harrowing distortion and double drum chaos; raucous and solemn song.


reviews:
avantmusicnews.com
thequietus.com



avantmusicnews.com review:

Saxophonist Anna Högberg has been on the periphery of my awareness for many years – someone that I know I’ve heard on several recordings but whose discography I’ve never explored. Her band Attack has been on hiatus for five years, but returns here with a burner of an album entitled Ensamseglaren (rough translation: “Lonely Sailor”).

The group is now a double sextet (yes, 12 people) with a selection of horns and reeds, two bassists, two drummers, piano, guitar, saws, and turntables. Outfits of this size tend to fall into one of several buckets: big band music, sparse undirected improv, or controlled chaos that pushes toward something greater than the sum of its parts. Högberg’s efforts here encompass aspects of all three but are firmly steered toward that last category.

The album consists of two long tracks, each containing multiple distinct passages. Ensamseglaren – Inte Ensam begins with soft textural improv that has an analog, glitchy character. The piece takes an unexpected, but very welcome, left turn with the inclusion of gritty and heavy guitar drones and chording. These are coupled with pounding drum lines and and wailing horns. But this section is over suddenly with a return to quiet, yet ominous, improv.

Gnistran – Hematopoesi – Emlodi opens with disjointed piano accompanied by pointillistic extended techniques from a handful of the other instruments. The saws provide shimmering overtones that eventually lead into a dense but deliberately paced melody driven by the horns, one that serves as a warped version of traditional jazz. Eventually this becomes more abstract and loose, before returning to a subdued piano-focused ending that remains busily-structured yet open.

Högberg’s music reflects a core understanding of the value of relationships. She has remained in her native Stockholm to collaborate with and nurture the people of its local experimental music scene rather than advance her career elsewhere. That same ethic comes through on Ensamseglaren. A true group effort, it exhibits a rawness that refuses polish for its own sake. At the same time, the music is deeply thoughtful, balancing bursts of visceral energy with parts that are based on careful design. The result is an album that both emotionally direct and intellectually rigorous.

- Mike ind AMN reviews

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thequietus.com review:

Anna Högberg Attack
Ensamseglaren
Fönstret

Over two sides of an LP, Ensamseglaren takes us along paths of genteel jazz, intriguing experimentation, thunderous doom, and brassy sighs capable of breaking your heart. With her 12-strong ensemble, reassembled after a five-year hiatus in order to help work through the grief of losing her father (the lonely sailor to whom the album title alludes), Anna Högberg has transcended any clichés about getting the old band back together. Their collective expression, their artistry, their simply being with one another, proves itself to be a viable method for processing the chest-hollowing feeling of parental loss.

‘Ensamseglaren / Inte Esam’ begins with gentle tapping, scraping, and a gloopy suction sound. Rain disturbs a window, and a rope appears to bash against a pole. A heaving horn shifts from exultant to bemused in a manner not unlike a gradually arching eyebrow. Falling midway between Stephen O’Malley’s guitar tones in Khanate and Sunn O))), Finn Loxbo’s heavily distorted six-string drone feeds back before slamming down over and over. There’s a sense of fighting against a squall as piercing brass shrieks alongside drums that build, skitter and rattle like a loose sail thrashing against the elements. Like hatches not quite battened down.

A semblance of control is manifested by the trombone of Maria Bertel and Per Åke Holmlander’s tuba, as they imply a course forward in a hail of drubbing rhythms mauling their way through great walls of concrete. It’s as if Laddio Bolocko have been let loose on a catamaran. A calm follows. The chaos flattens down, just like a soothed sea. The sounds become animal. Shakes, rolls, and snorts hint at an altogether different menace. Something mammalian. Maybe reptilian. Possibly even insect. A plethora of flaccid exhalations discombobulate and bewilder before it shifts, again, into a more conventional movement, formed from gentle, rising notes that drift into a melancholy refrain.

Opening with Alex Zethson’s late-night cocktail bar piano motif, ‘Gnistran / Hematopoesi / Emlodi’ slowly falls apart amidst snippets of reversed sounds, glottal clicks, frustrated bass thrums, and haunted saw wobbles. These disparate tones suddenly coalesce with the addition of Anton Jonsson and Dennis Egberth’s purposeful dual drumming. The explorative rhythms providing an anchoring pattern of snare rolls and mushrooming crashes as Högberg’s saxophone ascends these percussive mountains, haloing the peak with surging volleys of lung-popping peals.

If the first half weathers a maritime storm, the return leg is celebratory and heaven-gazing. At least until a violent drum demolition and typhoon-ed guitar brings us back, full circle, to that reconstructed bar-room piano and the sort of soft stick work that sounds like a leaky ceiling after a deluge.

It’s a masterclass in accurately transposing imagery into sound. The liner notes talk of shifting our perspectives on death. Of climbing soaring peaks and watching a solitary ship sail off towards the horizon as, concurrently, someone else witnesses the same ship pull nearer to their shore. Through this work Högberg transforms her grief into something positive. You could know nothing of the accompanying ephemera and still draw the undeniable conclusions that, yes, this section is dealing with a watery tempest, a nautical storm of loss, or, later, that we’re ascending mountainous regions with a twinkle of hope in our eyes. That we can interpret these distinct movements so accurately is testament to her skill and artistry. A formidable bandleader, she has returned to her craft and corralled her collaborators to not just sing from the same hymn sheet but to paint as one deft brush formed from twelve individual hairs.
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The Quietus
Jon Buckland
Published 9:00am 22 October 2025


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