Bananfluer Overalt by Jaga Jazzist

Norway’s most famous and acclaimed nine-piece jazz/alt.rock/prog/baroque/afro-beat masters return to the fray with a new EP drawing on their recent album, “One-Armed Bandit.” “Bananfluer Overalt” is a mixture of epic refrains, polyrhythmic mania and fiendish musicianship, sophistication and naivety being slammed together so hard that they fracture into something else altogether.

After that brief reminder of the wonders of Jaga, though, Lars Horntveth and co call in the remixers. Sprutbass comes straight out of the Scandinavian Skweee scene centred around the dødpop label. In keeping with the central tenets of the sound, Sprutbass reimagines “One-Armed Bandit” as three million synths riding to Valhalla on the back of a giant mechanical bird built on the offcuts of Chic’s leather jackets. FINAL (known to his mum as Magnus August Hoiberg) takes “220v / Spektral” and makes it into sunny disco/electro. Animator and producer Andreas Paleologos aka Cuckoo, on the other hand, turns “Touch of Evil” into the soundtrack for the heartbreaking sibling rivalry of Mario and Luigi, before Prins Thomas rounds things out with a slow-building and utterly epic 11 minute “Diskomiks” of the title track, held together by a low-slung baggy groove.

In an age of identikit, carefully-constructed and self-conscious acts, Jaga Jazzist are pure Nordic fresh air – pedal-to-the-metal, maverick, funny and serious, great musicians not too hung up on “taste” or appearing cool. And after all, what’s cooler than that?

Jazzist's have become something of a musical phenomenon in Norway since they started 19 years ago. Not only is this 9 piece 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