Review
Genre and Mood
Bugge Wesseltoft’s Try is nu-jazz at its quietest, jazz made with electronics and heard far beyond jazz, on chillout compilations from Café del Mar to Saint-Germain-des-Prés Café. Its feelings are intimate and relaxed: one voice, a keyboard and a soft pulse, what the Breath of Life blog called graceful and effortless.
Song Summary
Try is a duet. The voice belongs to the Norwegian singer Sidsel Endresen, credited with Wesseltoft as its writer and producer, and the track first appeared on their joint album Out Here. In There., released by Jazzland in May 2002. Writing for Kalamu ya Salaam’s Breath of Life in 2006, Mtume ya Salaam called it beautifully minimalist: nothing but Wesseltoft picking out a chord here and there on his keyboard, backed by the muffled thump of electronic drums.
Musical Breakdown
The review describes the track as a whole, so this breakdown follows its three elements rather than a timeline.
Intro
No source describes how Try begins. Listen for which comes first, a chord or the pulse.
Main Section
The keyboard plays sparingly, a chord here and there, and the electronic drums stay muffled. Endresen’s range is limited, the review says, but her tone recalls an old-time clarinet player, and it praises her as a lyricist of considerable skill.
Outro
The ending is not described in the sources; listen for whether the voice or the keyboard has the last word.
Concepts in Focus
The track shows what a soundtrack placement can do. The reviewer first heard Try on KCRW, the Los Angeles station, and a couple of years later it turned up in the film Prime; the recording appears on the film’s 2005 soundtrack album and on lounge compilations from Verve Today 2002 to Café del Mar Dreams 8.
It is also a lesson in credits. On Out Here. In There. the track belongs to Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft; on later releases, including the Café del Mar upload embedded here, Endresen is listed second, like a <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist, and the title on this page names Wesseltoft alone. She sings every word. Compare Marc Moulin – Into the Dark, another keyboardist’s record of the same years.
Artistic Context
Wesseltoft, born in Porsgrunn in 1964, released his records on his own Jazzland label in the 1990s, and the first album of his band New Conception of Jazz won a Spellemannprisen in 1996. With Endresen he made Nightsong, Duplex Ride and Out Here. In There., which won the 2002 Spellemannprisen in the open class. In 2016 he gathered twenty years of old and new songs, originals, re-recordings and remixes, on Somewhere in Between, with Try on its first disc.
Impact and Reception
The Irish Times called Wesseltoft a nu-jazz pioneer whose sparse, electronically polished music stays warm and human, and Try is that description in four minutes. Play it quietly, late.
