Reflection in Cosmo, a new album from four innovative Oslo-based musicians, combines the fire and fury evocative ’60s jazz with electronic rock-tinged experimental musical music. Kjetil Moster plays saxes, Hans Magnus Ryan plays guitar, Stale Storlokken plays keyboards, and Thomas Stronen plays drums. This self-titled debut is Moster’s second release on RareNoiseRecords. It also marks Moster’s return to avant-jazz with the Hungarian power trio Ju. This powerful Norwegian band recalls at times the fierce intensity of late-’80s free jazz quartet Last Exit (Peter Brotzman and Sonny Sharrock), and pushes the envelope with Moster’s baritone and alt saxes, Ryan’s grumbling electric guitar work, Storlokken’s crunchy, distortion-laced keyboards, and Stronen’s thunderous drumming. Moster explains that the band was started by Thomas and Stale. They have been releasing albums under the name Humcrush on Rune Grammofon for 15 years. They wanted to explore a new direction in terms of members and references. They wanted to know more about Hans Magnus “Snah” Ryan from Motorpsycho. However, they were unaware that Hans Magnus had just taken over for Stale in my own quartet Moster. It’s a small, inbred world, that.” Moster is referring to the small world of genre-crossing musicians operating at the twilight between experimental electric jazz and noise rock. Moster states, “Instead the jazz-rock that we had in 70’s and 1980’s, we can now talk about rock-jazz.” Ju, Elephant9, and Moster would all be part of this fellowship. Moster says that they will follow in the footsteps Last Exit. However, Moster points out that any comparison to Brotzmann is a compliment. His influence has been huge on my musical development for large portions of my life. Last Exit rings in my head even though we haven’t been discussing it. “We all bring our musical backgrounds into the stew and add it to this stew.” Reflection in Cosmo was recorded in Trondheim’s Ora Studio. It reveals some remarkable groupthink from these four Norwegian musicians. “I don’t like rules in music,” says Stronen, “and with the background we all have, from free-music to hip-hop and contemporary music, that’s not going to be an issue.” from www.rarenoiserecords.com
