13th April 2015: RELEASE DAY: Mikkel Ploug releases ‘At Black Tornado’ ft. Jeppe Slovbakke and Sean Carpio and gets 4 star reviews from Concerto Magazine and The Irish Times

At Black Tornado (click here for CD’s and digital albums) is the Whirlwind debut from guitarist Mikkel Ploug, a Denmark native currently based in Copenhagen with six previous albums released to worldwide acclaim. This new outing features his long-standing trio who’ve toured globally the past ten years and captures the feel, development, groove and joy of three like-minded musicians. With Jeppe Skovbakke on double bass and Sean Carpio on drums, the threesome have often toured and recorded in the company of  musicians such as Mark Turner and Loren Stillman, but the goal of this new record was to capture the aesthetics they have come to inhabit as their own sound.

Ploug’s new album unfolds with ease; listen as they settle into the first track “Waking Up” and allow the music to evolve organically while hinting and exploring the DNA of the composition. Their sound, in part, stems from the mix of Carpio’s ever evolving, longsighted rhythmic variations; the melodic and chordal Monk-inspired quirk of Mikkel’s phrasing (along with his signature dusty and woody guitar tone); and Jeppe’s 1950’s inspired high string height— think no amp— double bass sound with the rootedness he brings as a result of touring with the popular Indie Rock band ‘I Got You On Tape’.The trio’s aim for this recording was to play as ‘live’ in the studio as possible and as such their set up consisted of forming a circle configuration with no partitions, resembling their typical concert layout. In addition they approached the music as if performing a live concert: they played just one take of each song in a determined setlist order. There have been no edits or overdubs of any kind. To keep things fresh the forms were improvised at times as well, just listen in as Mikkel yells out “rhythm section up front!” during the count in to “Comacina Dreaming”.
Mikkel explains, “The album was a sort of homecoming for us; a zone that occurs when the three of us come together and make music. It was also time for us to record again as a trio and focus our attention on that sound. We’ve done a lot of playing with wonderful musicians over the years, but for this record we wanted to document just the three of us and our development as a unit with our own identity. We’re not in a rush with the music and we’re very content in each other’s company while still surprising and inspiring each other every time we play— it’s a great situation to be in. I feel all this comes through in the music.”

We have received two excellent early 4 star reviews for At Black Tornado. Here they are:

Listen to two full tracks from At Black Tornado