Geir Lysne - New Circle (2013) 320 / Lossless

Around 15 years ago, a new generation of jazzers set out to find new ways of escaping the rigidity of post-bop and jazz fusion. Young musicians, especially in Scandinavia, tore down genre borders and borrowed from their own folk music, rock and pop. Geir Lysne's redefinition of the big band concept was and is hardly any less revolutionary. Lysne taught the jazz orchestra an entirely new richness of timbres on three ACT albums. With unaccustomed instrumentations using flutes, percussion, laptop and instrumentally employed voices, and most of all with extensive recourse to world music contexts, a new 'Nordic' and unmistakable kind of melodious stereophony and dynamism resulted for the big ensemble. Although the foundation is only five acoustic instrumentalists, 'New Circle' sounds almost no less orchestral than the earlier albums. The key element here is Reidar Skar, a 'true master of the computer,' as Lysne says. Skar formed this 'electro-acoustic recomposition production' (Lysne) with his alienations and innovative computer sounds, without infringing on the artistic integrity of Lysne's orchestrations, subtleties, double entendres, his predilection for folk singers, ethnic grooves, strong melodies and soundscapes.