Known for his work with Splashgirl, Blokk 5, Ingrid Olava, Susanna Wallumrød, and Finland, Norway’s own Jo Berger Myhre hardly needs an introduction. An alumnus of the Norwegian Academy of Music, he holds a bachelor’s degree in performing improvisational music. In 2021, he made his solo debut on the RareNoise label with Unheimlich Manoeuvre, a mysterious, unsettling work whose title twists the life‑saving technique into something ambiguous, threatening, or subverted.
He followed it in 2023 with Live Manoeuvres, recorded across two performances on February 4 and 5 at Kulturkirken Jakob and Union Scene in Oslo and Drammen. Now, with his new album Penta, Myhre channels the musical spirit of his Unheimlich period into a stunning, breath‑stealing, and at times disturbing exploration of experimental atmospheres, an offering to the void for 2026.
The album features the same quartet from Live Manoeuvres: Kaveh Mahmudiyan, Jo David Meyer Lysne, Synnøve Sætre Hveem, and Morten Qvenild. Recorded over three days in May of last year at Amper Tone Studio in Oslo by Jonny Skalleberg and Thomas Pettersen, Penta places the listener directly inside the ensemble’s surreal chemistry, an alchemy that brings the album to life in the very moment you hold it.
‘Abyss in B‑Flat Minor’ opens with spacey‑turned‑eerie synths and cello sequences, its Viscount‑organ‑like textures echoing through the composition. It feels like a continuation of where Full Earth left off on ‘Weltgeist’ from their 2024 debut Cloud Sculptors, a sonic wasteland, a collapsing city, a Gotham on the brink.
Synnøve Sætre Hveem returns on ‘Augmentations in G‑Flat’, adding a radiant yet haunting vocal line that blends flamenco, tango, and malfunctioning synth terror. It crawls up the spine, never revealing what comes next. But it’s the Eno‑like opener, ‘Theme and Variations’, that speaks the loudest: a meditative wash of white‑noise‑tinged drones preparing the listener for the unknown futures Myhre imagines.
Things turn bleak on ‘Ancohemitonic Turn of Events’, plunging us into a post‑apocalyptic landscape of intense percussion, cello surges, pounding drum machines, and synths screaming like industrial factories begging the gods for mercy, aware the machines will soon inherit the universe.
‘Solo Improvisation’ drifts into a cinematic void reminiscent of the 1994 gothic‑supernatural film The Crow, starring the late Brandon Lee, before giving way to the laid‑back‑turned‑mechanical force of ‘Melody and Arpeggios’, where electronic jazz mutates into a percussive conga‑driven world.
The album closes with ‘Ending on a Low Note’, returning to the Viscount‑and‑cello palette. Here, the city lies in ruins under the rule of an emperor‑like figure who has descended into madness. The citizens prepare to overthrow him, though their own rule promises to be no less iron‑fisted.
Penta is not an easy listen. But Jo Berger Myhre continues to explore composition with evocative structure and fearless imagination, leaving us wondering where he—and we—will go next, and what the next chapter will bring in the years ahead.
