Scheen Jazzorkester & Ståle Storløkken — Double Reality Beyond Space And Time (Grong)
https://soundcloud.com/scheenjazzorkester
If we were writing a children’s book about this band, we might title it The Regional Norwegian Jazz Orchestra That Could. Scheen Jazzorkester (hereafter referred to as SJO) is a community ensemble that was founded in 2010 in order to give local musicians, mainly classically trained educators, a chance to play big band music and share it with the town of Skien (Scheen is an antique rendering of the town’s name). The band became a workshop for members who composed as well as a vehicle for collaboration with outside contributors. One of its more recent members is trumpeter Thomas Johansson, who grew up in Skien, moved away for college, and came back home after making his bones with Cortex, Friends & Neighbors, and various projects with Paal Nilssen-Love and Gard Nilssen. He helped steer the orchestra towards some particularly adventurous collaborations with Ambrose Akinmusire and Cortex, and put his world touring experience into getting the SJO to the USA for a tour in September 2024. Not bad for a band whose foundational mission could easily have been satisfied without ever leaving the Norwegian Grenland district.
Double Reality Beyond Space And Time further attests to the SJO’s spirit of adventure. It is a collaboration with keyboardist Ståle Storløkken, who has been a prominent figure in Norwegian jazz and improvised music for decades. You might know him from his membership in Supersilent and Elephant9, or his work with Terje Rypdal and Motorpsycho. He wrote the album’s six compositions, played most of the keyboards (Eyolf Dahle is also credited with piano), coproduced it with the SJO and mixed it into a finished form that neither party could have accomplished on its own.
For Storløkken, one supposes that the lure of this project is the chance to write for a stylistically flexible big band with a nine-piece horn section. That’s a lot of potential color, and over the record’s course he splashes a lot of it around. Maybe splash isn’t the right word, since he happily avails himself of the orchestra’s ability to execute complex charts with careful precision. His own playing is barely audible on certain tunes, which are given over to melodic exchanges between woodwinds and brass and tonally mutating statements of themes. At other points, he threads a sequence of reed voices through his chilly synthesizer melodies. For the SJO, on the other hand, one draw for working with Storløkken is his store of sounds more often associated with 1970s prog rock and fusion jazz. He has quite a store of vintage keyboards and knows just how to get those old sounds. When his Hammond organ and Dahle’s piano trade emphatic figures over a bobbing field of flutes on “Orbital Merry Go Round,” you might find yourself thinking a bit of Larry Young. And on “Anti Dark Blue Matter Mash Up,” a burly punch-up between different parts of the horn section led by Johansson and trombonist Mats Äleklint gives way to a passage of abstract organ burps that erupt from a field of broken rhythm. The field of prog-conscious big band records has never been crowded, but in these times, this is the one to beat.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
