Jaga Jazzist - Starfire (2015) 2CDs [Japanese Edition]

Jaga Jazzist, the Norwegian multi-instrumental boundary-busters, may occupy a niche, but it feels like an enduringly spacious and fertile one, where sounds that recall everything from Weather Report to big-band jazz, krautrock, Radiohead or even the Pat Metheny Group intertwine. Last year’s 20th anniversary retrospective was fascinatingly diverse, but Starfire – conceived in composer Lars Horntveth’s new Los Angeles home, rather than in Oslo – is a more densely layered and studio-dominated deployment of this band’s awesome resources. The title track is classic Jazzist: a sound like the Shadows driven by a marching-band thump skids through power-chord guitar hooks and Zappaesque melodic zigzags; the atmospheric Big City Music is a masterly balance of quickfire rhythm-section ingenuity and the instrumental diversity of guitars, keys and brass. The tunes remain quirkily dramatic and the thematic scene-shifting spectacular, but a little thinning-out would have let Jaga Jazzist’s uniquely mercurial music breathe more.

Review by John Fordham, The Guardian

Their principal songwriter moving to Los Angeles isn't the only reason it's taken Norway's Jaga Jazzist five years to follow-up their last studio LP, the sublime 'One-Armed Bandit'. When you make music this complex, this expressive, this multi-faceted, it would be missing the point entirely to rush it.

While Jaga Jazzist's sonic explorations can certainly be termed as jazz, they're about as far away from Miles Davis be-bop as it's possible to be, and to label them as merely 'jazz' would be to do them a disservice. There are elements of post-rock, electronica and prog peppering the five tracks that make up 'Starfire', and they all contribute to an album which provides you with something exciting and new each and every listen.

'Starfire' is unmistakeably Jaga Jazzist – many of the riffs still sound like the theme tune to a 1980s Eastern European quiz show – but there are definitely signs of growth. Burbling electronic basslines give a bit of meat to some of the arrangements, which is unexpected and welcome. However, the biggest revelation is the epic 'Oban', where sweeping strings and breathy saxophone give a previously unseen human quality to this most studious of bands.

Occasionally Jaga Jazzist paint themselves into a corner – the ending of the title track plucks an earlier riff out of nowhere and it feels a little like they took the easy way out – but 'Starfire' is never anything less than thrilling. Here's hoping they release some new material before the decade is out.

Review by Joe Rivers, ClashMusic.com

When the biggest stars in our universe begin to burn up and collapse they release neon gas. When electricity is passed through neon gas it glows. When it's captured within glass we can use it to make coloured light. When that glass is shaped into the outline of a naked girl it can be hung outside a strip club. In this meeting of the celestial and the profane, the epic and the particular, lies Jaga's new album Starfire. In December 2012, Jaga's main songwriter, Lars Horntveth, left Norway and moved to Los Angeles. There, on the other side of the world, inspired by the space around him, the size of the sky above him, the endless light flashing past as he drove round the city at night, he began composing the new suite of works which would become Starfire. Periodically he was joined by other members of the 8-piece band who would lay down their contributions in his apartment/studio before returning home to Norway. When the basics of the album were in place, he went back to Oslo to finish the record in the professional studios that the band had built and furnished over the years. The result is a revelation - in itself no mean feat for a band with a twenty year history. After the more heavily scored work of One Armed Bandit and Live with the Britten Sinfonia, Starfire moves to a more experimental studio-led approach - "The idea was that we thought about the songs as both the original song and a remix in one" - morphing each song into a variety of sonic directions. With an increase in the use of electronics and the guitar work of Marcus Forsgren given new prominence, it's probably the least straightforwardly "jazz" of their records. Instead, all the elements which have made them such an important band-the way their technical chops combine with the kind of mutual sympathy which comes from growing up together-are here melded into an utterly unique sound on what could turn out to be the group's crowning achievement. Centering around the Horntveth siblings (Lars, Martin and Line) the eight piece band Jaga formed in 1994, when Lars was still only fourteen. In their two decades of existence they've released five studio albums, one live album, five EPs (CD and vinyl), one live DVD and now a box set. Five of those eight original members are still in the group and all this has contributed to the group's deep mutual understanding. Add in a guest like Leon Dewan, who plays his own Swarmatron on "Shinkansen" and Lars' increasing use of a Pocket Piano synth as a tool for composition and you get the basis of a more hard-edged, electronic sound, perfectly melded with live musicianship. Starfire is a beautiful, visceral, utterly exhilarating piece of work that keeps spiralling up and away, structurally complex, musically rigorous, but without ever losing touch with a certain earthy sensuality and human sympathy. It could just be Jaga's masterpiece.