Jaga Jazzist, the multi-genre, multi-instrumental Norwegian collective, celebrate their 20th anniversary with this limited-edition vinyl box set. The box includes 2004’s sparingly jazzy Livingroom Hush album, out-takes from it, and a collection of producers’ remixes from 2012’s Live With Britten Sinfonia. The latter’s abundant soundworld, with its glimpses of Gil Evans, John Barry and Herbie Hancock, is inevitably narrowed by the remixers’ drum-machine throbs, cut-and-paste riffs and lashing metallic hits, but some versions (notably Big Black Delta’s edit of Music! Dance! Drama!, with its choral exclamations and Wurlitzer twirlings) do effectively distil the variously dark and breezy Jazzist lyricism to its essence. The band’s own brightly shuffling Animal Chin, the Cool School horn sound on Going Down, the inspired riffing behind Lars Horntveth’s tenor sax on Airborne and the prog-rocky squelch of Real Racers Have Doors are the real deal, though. It’s a collectors’ item for hardcore Jazzistas, but there are plenty of those.
