Add Date: February 9
Artist: Jaga Jazzist
Album: One Armed Bandit
Label: Ninja Tune
Genre: Acid Rock/Jazz
Comments: Jaga Jazzist (which reminds me of a bad videogame villain name)is a 9-piece Norwegian experimental type band, whose listed influences include My Bloody Valentine, Fela Kuti, Dungen, Jean Claude Vannier, Tortoise, Cornelius, Sonic Youth, and MGMT (I'd also argue there's a fair bit of early Stereolab in the mix).
I'm not gonna lie, I loved this album more than I have for the albums I've reviewed for awhile. It might just be because we're living through some sort of eternal snow hell, since this album invokes the idea of a "crappy winter." There's a definite lack of warm sounds in this album, and instead long slogs through musical snow (the shortest "real" track in this album is four and a half minutes, and the average track is a little over six), occasionally with bursts of sonic energy that leave you disoriented, in a whiteout sort of way. While the album is anchored to the concepts of acid jazz/prog rock musical experimentation, there's alot of different directions the band goes in, while avoiding obvious rise/fall/rise/bore patterns that alot of bad experimental bands collapse into (speaking of which, some guy from Tortoise produced this album). Standout tracks are "One-Armed Bandit" (which shifts from acid soaked spy soundtrack to electropop and back again), "Toccata" (a nine minute journey along the same lines of the "Halloween" title theme), and "Bananfluer Overalt" (probably the safest choice if you don't want your listeners to hate you forever).
Artist: Jaga Jazzist
Album: One Armed Bandit
Label: Ninja Tune
Genre: Acid Rock/Jazz
Comments: Jaga Jazzist (which reminds me of a bad videogame villain name)is a 9-piece Norwegian experimental type band, whose listed influences include My Bloody Valentine, Fela Kuti, Dungen, Jean Claude Vannier, Tortoise, Cornelius, Sonic Youth, and MGMT (I'd also argue there's a fair bit of early Stereolab in the mix).
I'm not gonna lie, I loved this album more than I have for the albums I've reviewed for awhile. It might just be because we're living through some sort of eternal snow hell, since this album invokes the idea of a "crappy winter." There's a definite lack of warm sounds in this album, and instead long slogs through musical snow (the shortest "real" track in this album is four and a half minutes, and the average track is a little over six), occasionally with bursts of sonic energy that leave you disoriented, in a whiteout sort of way. While the album is anchored to the concepts of acid jazz/prog rock musical experimentation, there's alot of different directions the band goes in, while avoiding obvious rise/fall/rise/bore patterns that alot of bad experimental bands collapse into (speaking of which, some guy from Tortoise produced this album). Standout tracks are "One-Armed Bandit" (which shifts from acid soaked spy soundtrack to electropop and back again), "Toccata" (a nine minute journey along the same lines of the "Halloween" title theme), and "Bananfluer Overalt" (probably the safest choice if you don't want your listeners to hate you forever).
No comments:
Post a Comment