GRADUALLY and cultishly, Norwegian octet Jaga Jazzist have been building probably the most interesting and wide-ranging catalogue in the modern jazz sphere; wholly unafraid of leaping genre fences, taking and tempering and incorporating strands of other musics in the most creative way. Listen to an album such as 2002’s A Livingroom Hush, or 2015’s Starfire, and just hear the speed and delivery of ideas. This is jazz as thoughtful and free-thinking as it is melodious and grooving, and bloody innovative.
And in advance of forthcoming LP Pyramid, their first for Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder imprint, Lars Horntveth and his collective have handed over “Spiral Era” to Norwegian producer Prins Thomas.
Prins takes the track out for a spin in the space disco arm of the spiral; to a place where silver catsuits are a very real and very enticing prospect. He lashes everything down around an astral-psych guitar vamp, letting the groove grow and breath and bind itself to your receptors, before nudging it out for other habitable worlds over futurist synth chatter and Edda Del’Orso-style wordless caresses.
Conclusion? Eleven minutes and 17 seconds of cinematic jazz-disco-soundtrack hit, looking back down on a Daft Punk remaining resolutely earthbound.
Prins’ remix of “Spiral Era” serves as a delicious taster for Pyramid, on which it is promised Jaga Jazzist will “ … take a deep dive into post-rock, jazz and psychedelia influences … [on] their first album since 2015’s Starfire, nodding to Tame Impala, Todd Terje and Jon Hopkins, each of the album’s four longform entries evolves over carefully plotted movements, the tracks’ technicolour threads dreamily unspooling.”
Ready to board?
Jaga Jazzist’s Pyramid will be released by Brainfeeder on August 7th on vinyl, CD and digital formats. Pre-order at http://www.jagajazzist.com/
