Jaga Jazzist: A Living Room Hush, out of Norway at last

A Living Room Hush sounds like ten people in one room, all of them intending to be heard. Jaga Jazzist released it in Norway in 2001 with almost no distribution behind it, and Ninja Tune has now put it out beyond the country, promo video for 'Animal Chin' included. It is melodic and delicate for long stretches, then a harsh electronic edge comes up under the melody, and nothing in it is background music.

Jaga Jazzist are a ten-piece from Norway, and all ten of them lead bands of their own. Members have turned up in Motorpsycho, Supersilent, Biosphere, Jazzkammer, Alog, the Bobby Hughes Experience, Euroboys and Big Bang, which is why the band is known at home for playing on nearly every Norwegian record worth keeping. A Living Room Hush is their second album, after Jævla Jazzist Grete Stitz in 1996 and before The Stix, What We Must, One-Armed Bandit, Starfire and Pyramid. Ninja Tune releases their work outside Norway from here.

The record was made in Norway with the full lineup: trumpets, trombone, tuba, two bass clarinets, Fender Rhodes, vibraphone, electric guitar, bass. The release carries its own filing, future jazz, drum and bass, experimental, and those three cover most of what happens across ten tracks. The original pressing barely travelled and still picked up critical praise. Ninja Tune's edition is dated November 25, 2002 and adds the 'Animal Chin' promo, a video described as Monty Python on safari. Digital copies go for $10 or more. The LP (ZEN76) and the CD (ZENCD76) are sold out.

The weight sits where the list suggests: trumpets and trombone up top, tuba and two bass clarinets underneath, Fender Rhodes and vibraphone in the middle, electric guitar and bass holding the floor. The playing is melodic and delicate, and the electronics are grit, applied hardest where the melody is thinnest. 'Animal Chin' opens the record with the oddness of its own video attached. 'Airborne' is the obvious one to hand a stranger first. It turned up on an FM broadcast in 2001, which is a strange thing to be true of a Norwegian ten-piece. 'Press Play' is an interlude, and it earns the interruption.

'Real Racecars Have Doors' and 'Made For Radio' are jokes in the running order, and the band can afford them, because nothing else here jokes about how hard it is played. 'Cinematic' closes the record, and the title is the only cinematic thing about it.

This is for people who play their Talk Talk records and their Squarepusher records in the same week and never find the middle. Jaga Jazzist sit in that middle, closer to Soft Machine's patience than to a club, closer to Aphex Twin's detail than to a jazz bar. If you need something to talk over, this is not it. If you want a record that gives back what you put in, it is.

The density is the problem as often as it is the point. Ten players rarely leave a gap, and the harsh edge does not always stop being harsh: there are passages where the electronics flatten the horns instead of sharpening them. 'Lithuania', the longest thing here at 8:38, is where that costs the most, because it has the furthest to travel and the most bodies in the way.

That the whole thing still holds together is the case for a 4. The melodies are strong enough to survive the crowding, the arrangements change shape often enough that ten tracks never settle into one, and it sounds like nothing else that came out of Norway that year or since. The files cost ten dollars. That buys you ten players and not one of them coasting.

The tracklist

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