There aren't many better spectacles than a big band in full flight. Take Jaga Jazzist, ten dishevelled Norwegians crammed onto the Garage stage with all of their horns, drums, vibes, guitars, samplers, effects units, tambourines and randomly distributed bits of facial hair. It's traditional, of course, to dream of being a rock'n'roll frontman, preening and untouchable, or perhaps a guitar hero, handling their instrument with both finesse and flamethrowing aggression.
Tonight, though, the most enviable musicians in the world are the members of this extraordinary collective. Just look at Martin Horntveth, the maniacal drummer who punctuates his entirely successful attempts to play drill'n'bass rhythms live by saluting the crowd, stick in air, and demanding they dance. Discretion and subtlety are for lightweights.
As their name suggests, Jaga Jazzist are a jazz band, but one with an eclecticism, attack and untrammelled joy that even long-term jazz-phobes may find tough to equate with their prejudices. Imagine, if you can, a more fluent and accessible Tortoise augmented by a horn section. Think how Charles Mingus or Gil Evans might've rearranged their big bands had they lived to record for the Warp label. Factor in a bassist, Even Ormestad, who often sounds like he's wandered in from a Fugazi session, plus a frantically maximalist approach to music, and you're in the vicinity of understanding how remarkable Jaga Jazzist are.
For want of a better term, we might as well call it Ecstasy Punk Jazz, this hyper-intense and euphoric music that reaches one enormous pummelling crescendo and immediately hares off in search of the next one. If the bands and styles they recall are often misunderstood as dour and over-serious, Jaga Jazzist are a multi-dimensional riot, as all the avant-garde and marginalised practises which they draw on are streamlined into this huge, compelling sound.
It's all so densely-packed, so relentlessly exciting, so justifiably over the top, that hyperbole seems the only rational critical response. As they charge through most of their superb second album, 'The Stix' - notably 'I Should Have Killed Him In The Sauna', which builds from relatively restrained spy theme atmospherics and electronic glitches into an endless sequence of staccato riffs - it's hard to think of many better live bands extant. Jaga Jazzist make their theoretical contemporaries like The Cinematic Orchestra sound grey and safe. But perhaps more importantly, they make the vast majority of rock and dance acts also seem both creatively malnourished and chronically short on energy. For anyone with a mind to confront their musical fears, there's no better place to start.
