Jaga Jazzist Announce First New Album Since 2015

Jaga Jazzist return with new album Pyramid, their first album since 2015's Starfire and ninth overall in a career spanning four decades, out on April 24th. It marks the group's debut on Brainfeeder, the LA-based imprint curated by Flying Lotus.

On Pyramid, the Norwegian eight-piece takes a deep dive into post-rock, jazz and psychedelia influences. The album nods to forebears spanning from '80s jazz band Out To Lunch and Norwegian synth guru Ståle Storløkken, to contemporaries Tame Impala, Todd Terjeand Jon Hopkins. Each of the album's four longform entries evolves over carefully plotted movements, the tracks' technicolour threads dreamily unspooling.

The band, led by Lars Horntveth and his compositions, took a direct approach to the creation of Pyramid. Whereas Starfire saw them take the idea of a traditional studio record to extremity, with different members dipping in and out of the booth to write, record and experiment over two years, the process behind Pyramid was almost the polar opposite: it took just two weeks. Both records were driven by the same curious, experimental spirit, but the processes were very different. Retreating to a secluded woodland studio in neighbouring Sweden, they bunkered into the studio for 12-hour days. "The most important thing is that we didn't want to over-analyze every musical idea," says co-founder and drummer Martin Horntveth. "We wanted to follow the first and original idea and keep the freshness." For a band which has never settled on any one sound or style, the continuity lies in their constant willingness to evolve, experiment and improvise.

Pyramid is Jaga Jazzist's first self-produced album (most of their records are produced by close collaborator, Jørgen Træen) and it meant a change in operations. On the one hand, there were lots of different voices jostling to be heard. On the other, they didn't have an independent figure to make a call on whether something was a good idea. "It was hard but felt natural to do ourselves, as five of us are producers and make records for a living," Martin says. The result is an album that feels more collaborative than ever.

Whilst they wouldn't describe Pyramid as a concept album, the band see the track titles as a conceptual starting point from which the listener can construct whatever story flows out of the songs. The album title refers to the building blocks which make up a pyramid, and how each of the four tracks - and their constituent parts - fit together. "Tomita" is a nod to Japanese composer and synth player Isao Tomita, and "The Shrine" alludes to Fela Kuti's legendary Lagos venue. Lars says, "I felt that this album is a small symphony, each part containing its own rooms to explore."

Tracklisting:

1. Tomita

2. Spiral Era

3. The Shrine

4. Apex

It's impossible to describe the myriad musical influences and inspirations that inform the sound of Norwegian supergropu Jaga Jazzist without tumbling down a rabbit hole of genre confusion. The band has consistently confounded categorisation from its inception. However, the direction of travel has been obstinately consistent: moving forward... always moving forward.

The youngest of three siblings who started Jaga Jazzist in 1994 in the small town of Tønsburg when he was just 14, Lars Horntveth has gradually emerged as Jaga's primary compositional voice. Lars, brother Martin, and sister Line all demonstrated a strong-willed distaste for orthodoxy - an early reason why Jaga sounds unlike any other band in any scene.

All bandleaders, producers, engineers, and/or busy session musicians, Jaga's members have always been at the heart of Norway's disproportionately large and vibrant music scene. All the more remarkable, then, that five of its current eight members remain from its early days, with Even Ormestad and Andreas Mjøs still here alongside the Horntveth siblings.

The band released their debut "Grete Stitz" in 1996, immediately grabbing the ears and eyes of musicians, producers and venue owners at the heart of Norway's music scene. "We got attention because Jaga was such a bizarre group and Grete Stitz was a very strange album," says Lars. "We started playing more shows in Oslo, mostly in small clubs; then we signed to the dBut label and recorded the Magazine EP, releasing it in 1998." While the 28-minute, four-track Magazine was no less eclectic than Grete Stitz, it was where Jaga's voice began to emerge more fully, with Lars' writing facilitating its textural breadth, long-form cinematic complexities, intrinsic lyricism and rampant multi-instrumentalism.

A career-defining moment for Jaga - already garnering a word-of-mouth reputation for exhilarating live performances - was signing with Ninja Tune in 2002. The label quickly reissued the band's second longplayer, A Livingroom Hush, to international acclaim. "Ninja helped get us out to the whole world," says Martin. "We played Japan...went to places we'd never been, with tons of people coming to the shows because they'd heard the name or about the band. Our records had already been in their shops and available online for years; it was really helpful."

Returning with Stix in 2002, What We Must (2005), One Armed Bandit (2009), an epic live album with Britten Sinfonia (2013), and a celebratory 20th anniversary compilation '94-'14 in 2014, Jaga released their last studio album Starfire in 2015. Constantly pushing himself to avoid the predictability common in bands achieving Jaga's longevity, Lars' epic, cinematic approach to writing has remained paradoxically accessible... singable, even. Still, despite having a primary composer, Jaga's fundamental philosophy is that everyone in the band contributes to the music's final shape.

The group's desire to evolve, experiment and improvise matches that of their new label home Brainfeeder, itself a beacon for musical fusion and hybridity, and heralds the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Jaga Jazzist.

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