(Smalltown Supersound/Ninja Tune)

‘Day’ is the first 12” to be released from ten-piece Norwegian jazz / electronic hybrid outfit Jaga Jazzist’s second full-length album ‘The Stix’, released last year on Ninja Tune. Jaga Jazzist first made their full-scale emergence on the leftfield electronic scene in 2001 with the release of their debut album on SmallTown Supersound / Ninja Tune, ‘A Livingroom Hush.’ On this first album, Jaga Jazzist introduced their innovative signature sound, taking the swingbeat-meets-jazz live instrumentation of their ten-strong live lineup of instrumentalists and smashing it all through a digital blender to send the organic grooves juddering off at crazy angles and jungle tempos, in a style more akin to Squarepusher or Aphex Twin than Bix Biederbecke or Count Basie. (In fact ‘Charles Mingus with Squarepusher jammed up his arse’ was how one tongue-in-cheek UK music journo described it upon its release.)

The original album version of ‘Day’ opens the A-side of this 12” with distorted looped drum breaks and scything digital noise sweeps, before shifting into plucked acoustic guitar and vibraphone over a swinging beat that almost brings to mind a more propulsive Stereolab by the time the soft-focus horn and Moogs enter. Exclusive non-album track ‘Two Things’ traverses more abstract electronic territory, with whirring clicking textures and short blasts of radio noise barely held together by a loping IDM breakbeat and glacial melodic keyboard tones that breaks down halfway into glitch and click chaos. Menacing, yet beautifully so.

On the flip, Matthew Herbert’s ‘Garden’ mix of ‘Day’ completely reshapes the original track into a juddering percussive downtempo groove that’s filled with a slight feeling of robotic apprehension, before the reassuring horns and plucked guitar of the original settle back into the mix. While the sampled percussive crashes and slams and the glitches and bleeps swing back and forth, the entire track is underpinned almost by a feeling of industrial cut-up swing that’s perhaps a mark of Herbert’s recent work with his Big Band project. Dat Politics’ ‘Cha Cha Laxist’ mix of album track ‘Reminders’ opens with what sounds like someone whistling and clanking around in the kitchen, before wildly manipulated guitar tones and stretched out horns start to resonate through a glitchy landscape, of pops, white noise bursts and static. By the track’s end, the effect is almost like listening to an elegiac horn solo played through a radio whose reception is being interrupted by nuclear fallout, shortly before slamming kid606-style drill and bass beats and ominous synth chords kick in. Not for the faint-hearted.

Recommended for fans of Stereolab, Prop and Tortoise

Check out: www.jagajazzist.com and www.smalltownsupersound.com