What Phillip Glass SHOULD have sounded like

The nine piece Norwegian jazz-rock-experimental behemoth that is Jaga Jazzist return to the fray with their stunning new album, “One Armed Bandit”. All galloping rhythms, and grandiloquent reach, main man Lars Horntveth describes the new sound, tongue-a-little-in-cheek, as “Wagner meets Fela Kuti!” Certainly we find it harder to imagine a better soundtrack being written for the first Nollywood Viking epic.

Jaga Jazzist have become something of a musical phenomenon in Norway since they started out fifteen years ago. Not only is this instrumental band regarded as one of the most exciting and innovative in Norway, the members are all involved in other musical projects and have in one way or another contributed to almost every significant recording to come out of that part of the world in the last few years. Their albums sell huge quantities in their own country and massive crowds come to their shows. Their international acclaim is signalled by the fact that the new album was mixed in Chicago by John McEntire of Tortoise.

Lars Horntveth began writing the music for “One-Armed Bandit” early in 2008. Looking for a way between and beyond the band’s previous albums, “What We Must” and “The Stix,” Hornveth decided that everything would be charted and written out, noth more focussed and layered than ever before. One night, while listening to Fela Kuti, he came up with title-track “One Armed Bandit” and everything fell into place – a kinf of ride of the polyrhythmic acid-addled valkyries that scarecely lets up acorss the 53 minutes of the final album.

Having taken on two new members, Øystein Moen and Stian Westerhus, the band rented a house in the Swedish forest to rehearse “this new Zappa-esque, more humorous prog-rock music.” On their return they rehearsed endlessly, a new tune each week, until in December 2008 the band went to Cabin Recorders to put down the album with Jørgen Træen, their producer since the early days of the group. Unfortunately, through no fault of the band’s, Træen got tinnitus after three weeks, so the mixing was completed in Chicago by the band and none other than John McEntire.

At heart this collective is a restless soul, going in many directions at the same time, but always going forward. Fast. The band always push their boundaries, both personal and musical. That is why they are impossible to categorize. And that's why they're special. Jaga is something natural and beautiful. A necessity. For both them and us.


One-Armed Bandit

Toccata

Jaga Jazzist - Toccata (EDIT)

Vogelkamer

from the debut self-titled album by High Tides (Warren Kroll & Steve Lutes), out summer 2015 on Rad Cult

High Tides' remix of "Eruption" originally from the 2014 TOBACCO album "Ultima II Massage" out on Ghostly.  

High Tides at http://www.facebook.com/hightidesvibes

High Tides - Eruption (High Tides Version)


Botany, 'Dimming Awe, The Light is Raw' out September 18th on Western Vinyl

Bandcamp: https://botany.bandcamp.com/album/dimming-awe-the-light-is-raw
iTunes: hyperurl.co/qzgj6u

Botany:
Artist Page westernvinyl.com/artists/botany
Facebook www.facebook.com/BotanyMusic
Twitter twitter.com/botanymusic

Under the Botany moniker, Spencer Stephenson creates rich psychological and emotional experiences through audio. When he started creating his own music at age 15, he was enamored with Four Tet, Stars of the Lid, Madlib, and Dilla. In his late teens, he went through a heavy period of discovery with Psychedelic rock, Krautrock, and Brit-folk. "I started imitating a lot of those forms in my own music, sampling them sometimes, recording from scratch sometimes, but really just trying to bridge a gap between those worlds and sample-based hip hop, and I’m still trying."

On his latest effort Dimming Awe, the Light is Raw, the 27-year-old producer and composer continues dissolving the borders between his disparate-yet-beloved psych, hip hop, and ambient influences. Unlike his debut LP Lava Diviner, which peaked and valley-ed through a narrative arc, Dimming Awe focuses on the artist's ever-unfolding, present state of mind. As a former jazz student, spiritual/free jazz philosophy regarding what he calls “emergent” music has increasingly become a guiding light when he creates. "The more emergent I let my music be when I'm making it, the more I like the result, it feels like a truer reflection. I feel like I am getting closer to doing that with computer-made music," he says. "This album is a document of what I do, not a statement in any explicit way. I feel like I'm moving closer to a jazz underpinning that I've always felt, philosophically more than aesthetically…making music feels more like exhaling as I grow older.”

Botany - "Raw Light Overture"

http://shop.rachelflowersmusic.com/releases

This is my cover of the great Wayne Shorter composition, Elegant People from the album Black Market by Weather Report. The saxophone is played on my Roli Seaboard Grand from a program called SWAM Sample Modeling. The strings are East West Hollywood Strings, Diamond Edition. The rest of the orchestra is the Vienna Symphonic Library. The percussion is from Garritan Jazz and Big Band. The piano is my Nord 88, the new Silver Grand sample. I played real fretless bass. The drums are from Session Drummer 3 - Legends Kit 2.

I listened to a lot of different versions and was interested in orchestrating the piece. This is what I came up with.

Elegant People - Weather Report (cover)

SPACE PATROL (“Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion”) was the first German science fiction television series. Its seven episodes were broadcast by ARD TV, the first episode being aired on September 17th of 1966. Being a huge success with audience ratings up to 56%, the series acquired a distinct cult status in Germany and worldwide.

Peter Thomas composed and recorded the original score, which has become a soundtrack classic and collector’s item among rare groove afficionados since its original release on Philips. The music, floating between avantgarde jazz, big band beat and spaced-out psychedelia, set a new benchmark in the history of film music and science fiction scores and became one of Thomas' best known works. The title theme is the first known piece of music in pop history to feature a vocoder, a device that until then had exclusively been used for voice encoding in military warfare. Peter Thomas borrowed a device from the Siemens factory to process his voice for the recording of the countdown.

The composer remembers: “When producing the score, I had complete creative freedom. No one had ever been into space, so no one would dare to tell me how the music should sound like.”

Now, 50 years on, The Mighty Mocambos teamed up with the legendary musical mastermind a recorded an up to date, truly global and funky 2016 version in tribute of the original theme. “Space Patrol (Raumpatrouille)” is the only official recording of the track released for this anniversary and authorized by Peter Thomas, who even plays on it himself. To give this 50 years version a new twist, the specially formed Mocambo Astronautic Sound Orchestra adds steel band orchestration to the massive brass and funky rhythm section.

Orion 2016 is available as a 7inch single in a deluxe picture sleeve on Mocambo Records and as a digital download on Légère Recordings.

PETER THOMAS & MOCAMBO ASTRONAUTIC SOUND ORCHESTRA -  SPACE PATROL (ORION 2016)

Portakabin Fever

Re:percussions

Off-Peak OST

Frogphone

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross-"In Motion" (Omniflux Remix)

Kid koala - 8 Bit Blues

Ninja Tune has established itself as one of the world’s leading independent record labels. Now a bonafide global music institution, synonymous with diverse, uncompromising releases and equally visionary artists—from breaking-through to GRAMMY-winning, internationally acclaimed acts—committed to pushing the boundaries of music.

Jaga Jazzist - Toccata (EDIT)

Ninja Tune

Recent comments

Dustin

Elliot Elliot

Orki Panama

richardmiles

Related tracks