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Jaga Jazzist

Jaga Jazzist has become something of a musical phenomenon in Norway since they started 15 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. It has been this strong involvement with different projects, and different musical styles and sounds which is the key to the unique sound of Jaga Jazzist. With no boundaries and an arsenal that includes trumpet, trombone, electric guitars, bass, tuba, bass clarinet, saxophones, keyboards, vibraphone and a rack of electronics, Jaga Jazzist create timeless music. Melodic, hypnotizing, delicate and subtle.

Jaga Jazzist started out in Tonsberg (a small town outside Oslo) in 1994 at which time Lars Horntveth (the main songwriter in Jaga) was only 14 years old! In 2001 they released their debut album, A Livingroom Hush on Warner in Scandinavia to massive critical acclaim and great sales (the album sold over 15000 copies in Norway alone..). The band then signed a deal for the rest of the world through Oslo`s Smalltown Supersound. Throughout 2002 the band shocked fans and critics alike with their blistering live shows and the buzz resulted in sold out dates all over Europe and the band soon came to the attention of Ninja Tune who did a license/collaboration deal with Smalltown Supersound.

At the same time that their debut album was gaining more and more international success, Jaga recorded the follow up titled The Stix, their first for Ninja Tune. As with their first album it was produced by Norwegian superproducer Jørgen Træen the man behind Duper Studios in Bergen (home of Røyksopp, Kings of Convenience, Sondre Lerche et.al.) but this time Jaga wanted to push their musical limits even further and really create a sound they could genuinely call "Jaga Jazzist." It was the perfect balance between (hu)man and machine, and it never lost the organic nature of a live 10 piece.

After heavy touring next came their most radical What We Must album, the result of the band going into an isolated studio out in the Norwegian woods and recording the demo now known as the Spydeberg Session. Put down in one take in one day, it was a breakthrough moment for the group.

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Liner Notes

Jaga Jazzist: '94 - '14

Read "Jaga Jazzist: '94 - '14" reviewed by John Kelman


It's hard to believe that Norway's Jaga Jazzist is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, in 2014. Not that there aren't other groups that have lasted as long, but look for a group whose primary composer was just 14 when the whole thing began, find a band where five out of its eight current members were there when everything started in 1994, and scope out one that has managed to remain as stylistically enigmatic and impossible to categorize as... well, ...

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Live Review

Big Ears Festival 2018

Read "Big Ears Festival 2018" reviewed by Mark Sullivan


Big Ears Festival Knoxville, TN March 22-25, 2018 Knoxville's Big Ears Festival has traditionally kicked things off with a big piece by a high-visibility headliner. This year was to have featured a live performance of guitarist Nels Cline's Lovers project, an ambitious re-imagination of romantic “mood music" which was to be performed with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra and guest soloists. But the Spring snowstorms across the Northeast had other ideas, making travel too difficult to allow ...

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Take Five With...

Take Five with Lars Horntveth of Jaga Jazzist

Read "Take Five with Lars Horntveth of Jaga Jazzist" reviewed by Lars Horntveth


About Jaga Jazzist If Jaga has any rules, there's really just one: every album must sound like nothing that preceded it. With Starfire, the group that has confounded categorization from inception has delivered yet another album unlike any they've ever done before. Yet, at the end of the day--despite touchstones ranging from Gil Evans to Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine to Tortoise, Oslo 13 to Motorpsycho and Fela Kuti to Steve Reich--Starfire still sounds absolutely like nobody but Jaga ...

6
Album Review

Jaga Jazzist: Starfire

Read "Starfire" reviewed by Alex Franquelli


First things first: let's leave the definition of Jaga Jazzist music for last. Or, better, let's not even consider using labels. Let's not rush to conclusions, let's not fall in the sweet traps of music criticism where one plunges in forced by adjectives, hyperboles, comparisons, clever rhetoric and assorted namedropping. First things first, we said, as if it were easy to define an ensemble which has rewritten the history of European contemporary jazz by adding progressive, noise, classical and electronic ...

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Extended Analysis

Jaga Jazzist: Live with Britten Sinfonia

Read "Jaga Jazzist: Live with Britten Sinfonia" reviewed by Phil Barnes


Norwegian collective Jaga Jazzist don't sit comfortably within genre boundaries. Their earlier UK Ninja Tune releases like A Livingroom Hush (2001) and The Stix (2003) suggested a marriage of jazz texture with glitchy, breakbeat driven electronica in a way that was both diverting and interesting, if likely to incite the wrath of the more traditional jazz fan were it to be described as more than “jazz influenced." Later records such as 2005's What We Must and 2008's One Armed Bandit ...

5
Extended Analysis

Jaga Jazzist: Live with Britten Sinfonia

Read "Jaga Jazzist: Live with Britten Sinfonia" reviewed by John Kelman


Norway's Jaga Jazzist has always been difficult to pigeonhole. Despite the word “jazz" in the nonet's moniker, its principle writer, multi-instrumentalist Lars Horntveth, has cited everyone from Steve Reich, Rick Wakeman, Dungen and Spirit to Fela Kuti, King Crimson, MGMT and Air as influences on the group's last studio record, One-Armed Bandit (Ninja Tune, 2010). Horntveth is also a fan of jazz arrangers/composers like Gil Evans, so it's not that Jaga Jazzist doesn't have jazz in its DNA; it's just ...

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Profile

Jaga Jazzist: Maximalistic

Read "Jaga Jazzist: Maximalistic" reviewed by Angela Shawn-Chi Lu


A Norwegian nonet that rocks 35 instruments onstage and smashes Afrobeat, prog, film music, cheesy fanfares and Steve Reich arpeggios together against a backdrop of gigantic slot machine fruit? The odds of that happening are “No friggin way!" But as it turns out, one such nonet does exist. What's even more shocking is that Jaga Jazzist (pronounced “yaga yazzist") has made this demented formula supremely successful. Over its 17-year career, Jaga Jazzist has garnered international and critical ...

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Event

Jaga Jazzist's "Starfire" Tour at Electric Brixton on November 5th

Jaga Jazzist's "Starfire" Tour at Electric Brixton on November 5th

Source: Soundcrash LTD

Soundcrash is very proud to announce the experimental jazz ensemble Jaga Jazzist will be taking to the stage at Electric Brixton on Thursday the 5th of November to showcase their incredible genre blending style of music. Jaga Jazzist combine and incredible array of instruments with an electronic otherworldliness that has always made them a band that’s live performances are definitely worth seeing. They manage to mix hugely complicated music with engaging and catchy tunes creating an uncomparable soundscape of music ...

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Recording

Jaga Jazzist to Release "Jaga Jazzist Live With the Britten Sinfonia" on May 6

Jaga Jazzist to Release "Jaga Jazzist Live With the Britten Sinfonia" on May 6

Source: All About Jazz

Those unlucky enough to miss Jaga Jazzist in performance with the UK's Britten Sinfonia in either London, at The Barbican, last summer or Oslo, at Rockefeller, last fall—the final show of Conexions,a series curated by Fiona Talkington, host of the terrific BBC Radio 3 show Late Junction, amongst many other things, and reviewed at All About Jazz here—will be happy to hear that the progressive Norwegian group will be releasing the Oslo show on May 6, 2013 as Jaga Jazzist ...

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Recording

Jaga Jazzist Featured at AAJ!

Jaga Jazzist Featured at AAJ!

Source: All About Jazz

Back after a five-year hiatus, Jaga Jazzist's One-Armed Bandit (Ninja Tune, 2010) is released today in North America. To celebrate the release of One-Armed Bandit, AAJ is providing extensive coverage:

Read AAJ Managing Editor John Kelman's insightful review of One-Armed Bandit;

Download the title track to One-Armed Bandit, today's Daily Download;

Watch Jaga Jazzist perform “One-Armed Bandit" on Norwegian public television (NRK), today's Video of the Day;

Check out an action shot of Jaga Jazzist, performing last year at Molde ...

"Ground floor for musical innovation, lunacy and special-offer ideas..." New Musical Express

"Like Charles Mingus with the Aphex Twin up his arse. Delectable." Sleazenation

"… a feast of infectious beats and exciting arrangements delicately resolved with nuance to produce a variety of atmospheric pleasures" The Wire

"Performing much of One-Armed Bandit at Molde, Jaga Jazzist's mélange of rock energy, jazz vernacular, minimalistic tendencies, episodic composition, expansive instrumentation and electronic manipulation has never sounded better. Not since 1970s British progsters Gentle Giant has there been a group combining so many multi-instrumentalists, playing music so complex and ever-shifting that it's a paradoxically exhausting yet exhilarating experience just trying to keep up with who's playing what." AllAboutJazz.com

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Starfire

Harmonia Mundi
2015

buy

'94 - '14

Ninja Tune
2014

buy

Live With Britten...

WEA International Inc.
2013

buy

Live With Britten...

WEA International Inc.
2013

buy

One-Armed Bandit

Ninja Tune
2010

buy

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