Cortex: Avant-Garde Party Music (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Cortex? No, this isn’t jazz of the cerebral kind – even considering that the approach in “Avant-Garde Party Music” is very much the intelectual one coming from the bebop / hard bop era (when the music seated its users, inviting them to listen and not prioritarily to dance) and approaching our times through the free jazz evolutive line. Avant-garde the music certainly is, but you can still party with it, because this record grooves and swings like hell. Not in the conventional way, of course, but giving a chance to your temptation to shake the body. Having the transitional years going from bop to free as reference, it’s natural that you find on these tracks the influence of what Ornette Coleman did with Don Cherry. But this isn’t as simple as that: Cortex is a Scandinavian band and as such the music has a twist, the same you’ve found before in groups like The Thing, Atomic and The Core: a sort of hyper-realism, turning this jazz born in Europe even more “authentic” than the American original.

1 Grinder 5:49

2 Chaos 3:48

3 Waltz 5:58

4 (If you where) Mac Davis 3:38

5 Disturbanc 4:22

6 Obverse/Reverse 5:01

7 Perception 5:12

8 Off Course 3:54

Cortex

Thomas Johansson  trumpet

Kristoffer Berre Alberts  saxophones

Ola Høyer  double bass

Gard Nilssen  drums

Cortex - Live in New York (2016) CLEAN FEED RECORDS

On Cortex second release with Clean Feed Records you’ll find them again in the best context possible: in concert. Considering that the band works in the tradition pioneered by Ornette Coleman, this concert recording has a special significance, because it took place in the world capital of jazz, New York.

The approach may be somewhat European, but the music registered here seemed (and seems) at home. Critics wrote at the occasion that Cortex is walking the same routes where we can find John Zorn’s Masada. This means the music is energetic and robust, with a frenetic rhythm section and a trumpet / sax frontline very exact when delivering unisons and counterpoints and free in the improvised solos. The music is simultaneously heavy and agile, flowing as a bird of prey in open air, and defying gravity. A must have, must listen!

1. Higgs 7:56

2. Fall 7:05

3. Ghost March / Ahead 20:25

Thomas Johansson  trumpet

Kristoffer Alberts  saxophones

Ola Høyer  double bass

Gard Nilssen  drums

All compositions by Thomas Johansson (TONO)

Recorded live by Randy Thaler at IBeam Brooklyn, September 18th 2015 | Mixed by Ingar Hunskaar, February 2016 | Mastered by Fridtjof Lindemann and Ingar Hunskaar at Strype Audio, April 2016

Produced by Cortex  | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos