Powered by Google
Home
New This Week
Listings
8 days
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Art
Astrology
Books
Dance
Food
Hot links
Movies
Music
News + Features
Television
Theater
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Classifieds
Adult
Personals
Adult Personals
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Archives
Work for us
RSS
   

Jaga Jazzist
THE STIX
(NINJA TUNE)
Stars graphics

On their second album, the Norwegian group Jaga Jazzist spend 10 songs and 53 minutes tying fusion, modern jazz, and IDM into a package that triangulates among digital skitter, Scandinavian cool, and prog-rock grandeur. It’s ground that’s been well trod by groups like Isotope 217 and fellow Europeans like Nils Peter Molvaer, but this 10-piece have their own take on jazzy electronica that’s a compelling mix of Mahavishnu Orchestra bluster and Squarepusher skitter. There’s a real compositional rigor at the heart of their futurist explorations, from the odd-meter vamps of "Reminders" to the elegant horn harmonies of "Aerial Bright Dark Round." There’s also a natural allegiance between the worlds of experimental jazz and techno — a tension between composition and improvisation, an obsession with tone and timbre; and Jaga Jazzist exploit the similarities throughout. The clicking of saxophone pads merges into laptop pitter-patter on "Kitty Wu"; intense drum ’n’ bass numbers like "Toxic Dart" play at the edge of chaos. Despite a particular Northern European fussiness — if anything, the album is over-composed — Jaga Jazzist turn out a restless and rigorous brand of laptop jazz that confidently reproduces the man/machine interface.

BY MICHAEL ENDELMAN


Issue Date: May 23 - 29, 2003
Back to the Music table of contents








home | feedback | masthead | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | work for us

 © 2000 - 2007 Phoenix Media Communications Group