Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and Ole Morten Vågan – Happy Endlings

Odin

The Trondheim Jazz Orchestra is a many-headed beast that has been going since the early 2000s and changes personnel from one album to the next to keep their approach fresh for each collaboration. The orchestra draws from a collective pool of players, and it would seem that one particular member takes the reins for each release. This time around it is bassist Ole Morten Vågan, whose compositions are fleshed out by the sprawling thirteen-piece collective and an extraordinary undertaking it is.

Clearly, as the orchestra have been going for so long, they know their stuff — but for this album in particular, they seem to have taken some solace from the fact that the likes of Kamasi Washington and Binker and Moses are pushing jazz into a new place, stretching the compositions and length of albums almost to breaking point. Happy Endlings is an eight-track, seventy-two-minute opus that literally covers as much ground as it possibly can without leaving the listener too far behind.

When you are starting with two drummers and three clarinet/sax players as well as trumpet, trombone, Hammond, piano and voice, you know that this is going to be something unlike the usual jazz outing, and in some respects is like trying to describe a Turner painting to a blind person. The sheer depth and scale of the undertaking is quite amazing, yet for all the players and their keenness to make themselves heard, there is room here for everybody and it does feel genuinely democratic.

Opener “Vilken Låt Ska Vi Inte Spela Nu” is a completely madcap introduction to this particular group. It has the expansive sweep of an orchestra, but some of the horns are tiptoeing while others are stomping. The drums shuffle and skip and the leer of a fairground organ pops its head up here and there. A piano picks its careful way through a gentle passage with the bass urging it along, trying to rush it when it isn’t necessary. The piano freaks out and at this point, Oscar Grønberg makes like Dave Brubeck having an epileptic fit while a tsunami of drums surges behind. Quite often this music is compared to the sort of thing that would have been used in cartoons years ago; but seriously, this is so anarchic it would flip the kids out and send them bursting into the garden. There is a motif in there somewhere to which the horns keep returning, but they lose interest and sneak off somewhere else.

It is a breathtaking introduction that really sets out what this group of players can accomplish and reflects the wild compositions of Vågan. The album is not all as anarchic as this, but the length of some of the tracks leaves them open to finishing in a completely different frame of mind to how they started. “The Sussex Pub In Essex (Or The Essex Pub In Sussex)” starts calmer, with a more summery vibe. It lollops along, but we can just about keep up as the rhythm section searches in vain for some kind of Latin rhythm. They find it and lose it again, drop it and kick it along the road as the clarinets have themselves a right old party; leaping, searching, reaching, notes clawing at the clear blue skies. The two drummers really push things on — you can almost see them, kits facing one another, each urging the other on to breaking point; but then a trumpet is introduced and that changes things dramatically. It is wispier, more intimate, with strange effects producing a kind of shadow twin that lurks in the background.

Swedish soprano Sofia Jernberg adds voice to “Me Tar Sand, You Jane” and the romantic feel here has much more space. The wordless voice drifts in a gentle miasma of barely present sounds until the bass interjects and a motorik rhythm sets off. It surges against the duelling voice and horns, and during the quieter passages, a violin weaves its way through the scenery, its sweet tone sprinkling a little stardust, doing its bit like everybody else to support this endeavour. It is on the slow, strung out five minutes of “Un-Merry-Go-Round” that I am reminded most of a normal orchestra, but this is just a taster, a reminder that they can rein things in. “The Barrage Jam”, with its muted trumpet and easy flowing, irresistible rhythm, feels like a Thirties honky-tonk, the tone warm and welcoming with the inviting horns tottering and swaying around the rhythm like moths around a flame as Sofia leans over their shoulders, adding further texture.

I keep thinking of that description of post rock: “rock instruments for non-rock purposes”. It could equally apply here, but substituting jazz for rock. The instruments tell you it should be jazz, but it is just far too adventurous, too broad of scope. I am reminded of the likes of Don Caballero or Polvo and their intricate switches of rhythm, their insistence on playing with tone and texture, their unwillingness to allow a track to stay still for too long. But here, considering how many people are involved, it is on a much grander scale.

I felt almost overwhelmed by the album at its close and genuinely gave a sigh of relief as silence reigned again. I can’t believe that anybody could push jazz any further, but I look forward to somebody picking up that gauntlet and it may well be the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra themselves, ever restless, incredibly inventive and on the strength of this, untouchable.

-Mr Olivetti-