Colin Stetson is a busy man. Earlier this year, the master of tense drone-moan-squawk bass sax teamed up with fellow avant-garde OGs Greg Fox and Trevor Dunn to release the album Nethering, and he did the soundtrack for Netflix’s Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen. Next month, Stetson and experimental bagpiper Brìghde Chaimbeul will release their new collaborative LP All The Light In The World. He is also one third of 10¹⁷, a band that also includes Stian Westerhus and Erland Dahlen, two powerhouse musicians from the Norwegian jazz world, and today they released their first song.
10¹⁷ is a reference to the energy theoretically needed to create a black hole. (The trio presumably has nothing to do with Gucci Mane's 1017 Bricksquad crew, though that would be interesting.) Westerhus is a guitarist who has played in groups like Jaga Jazzist and Puma, while Dahlen is a drummer who has made a bunch of solo records and played for bands like Madrugada. Dahlen once played drums for Westerhus' band Pale Horses, whose album Maelstrom came out on Rune Grammofon in 2014.
10¹⁷ have already been touring since 2024, and they've apparently got a new album on the way. Today, they share their debut single, an eight-minute track called "End This Now." It's closer to way-out psychedelic rock than to abstract jazz, and Westerhus' yelpy vocals give the track a real Radiohead-esque feel. Cool song!
Here’s what Westerhus says about the track:
“End this now” is a song about middle age and how being an adult still doesn’t make you less afraid of being in the dark forest of life all alone. Those young and naive steps in life that turned in to secure footsteps down that long winded trail. You realise there has been so much time and life already. So much that time seems to have stood still for a long while. You’ve been simmering in it and it has become you as you have become it. As if it was this way, forever.
And then you realise; this ends now. The plug is pulled. Lights are off. Keys don’t work. The roads don’t lead to where you think they should. What lies ahead is just new. New times. Just like a baby, in to the unknown with a scream. “You saw it coming!?” Reality turns in to a mere memory.
Like most songs on this album the lyrics are strongly inspired by friends and not so friendly people struggling with their life, as we probably all do.”
Listen and check out Stetson’s tour dates with 10¹⁷ and Chaimbeul below.
10¹⁷ (Colin Stetson, Stian Westerhus, Erland Dahlen)
8/15 Oslo, Norway
8/16 Aalborg, Denmark
8/18 Warsaw, Poland
8/19 Berlin, Germany
8/20 Malmö, Sweden
8/22 Stockholm, Sweden
Colin Stetson + Brìghde Chaimbeul
9/9 Toronto, ON, Canada
9/11 Montreal, QC, Canada
9/12 Québec, QC, Canada
9/15 Brooklyn, NY
9/19 Kingston, NY
9/20 Boston, MA
“End This Now" is out now on Invada/Envision.
