Jaga Jazzist – “Spiral Era”

Jaga Jazzist – “Spiral Era”

Jaga Jazzist, the beatwise and experimental Norwegian jazz eight-piece, have been making music since way back in the mid-’90s, and they’ve inspired a whole lot of adventurous music from all around the musical map. Today, Jaga Jazzist have announced a new album, their follow-up to 2015’s Starfire, and they’ve shared a very cool new track.

The new Jaga Jazzist LP Pyramid only includes four tracks, but those four tracks should cover a lot of area. The band recorded while all eight members bunkered down in the studio for eight-hour days, trying not to overthink anything. It’s the first album that they produced themselves. One track, “Tomita,” is named after the Japanese synth composer Isao Tomita; another, “The Shrine,” gets its title from Fela Kuti’s old club in Lagos.

“Spiral Era,” the first of of those four songs that we get to hear, doesn’t sound a whole lot like jazz, at least in the way that most of us tend to think of the word. Instead, it’s an eight-minute percussive synth-drone sprawl, a piece of circular beat music that reminds me of the Notwist more than anything. There are sparkling guitar lines, wafting synths, interlocking drum parts, and wordless vocal sighs. You can bliss out to it pretty hard. Below, listen to the song and check out the Pyramid tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Tomita”
02 “Spiral Era”
03 “The Shrine”
04 “Apex”

Pyramid is out 4/24 on Brainfeeder.

more from New Music