With a playful interaction and energetic presence, the BLISS Quintet has quickly established itself as a forward-thinking band within the Norwegian jazz community. Their music is a fine balance of composed and improvised, beautiful and violent, structured and playful, intimate and epic.

The band has its origins in the jazz line at NTNU, and has

With a playful interaction and energetic presence, the BLISS Quintet has quickly established itself as a forward-thinking band within the Norwegian jazz community. Their music is a fine balance of composed and improvised, beautiful and violent, structured and playful, intimate and epic.

The band has its origins in the jazz line at NTNU, and has played at many venues and festivals including the Nasjonal Jazzscene, Dølajazz, Canal Street and Christiania Jazzclub. In 2020, they played on the renowned talent stage Nordic Showcase during the Oslo Jazz Festival and were selected by the festival to be part of their main program in 2021.

In 2022, the BLISS Quintet release their long-awaited and eagerly anticipated debut album "Dramaqueen" on Jazzland Recordings. The brand new album has a rich range of colors and expressions, where the music is rhythmically pulsating with sonorous and melodic touches. "Dramaqueen" derives its unique character from its tones and musical choices through the use of microtonality, strong riffs and honest solos.

The BLISS Quintet has a unique instrumental line-up with instruments such as a quarter-toned trumpet and acoustic fretless bass guitar. These elements play a key role in embuing "Dramaqueen" with a unique musicality, defamiliarising without dominating the sound. Their performances allow all the musicians contribute with intricate compositions and personal touches.

The album is supported by NTNU, Trondheim Municipality and Bandorg.

In the 25 years since Bugge Wesseltoft founded Jazzland Recordings, he has engaged in numerous group projects and collaborations such as New Conception of Jazz, duos with the likes of Sidsel Endresen, Henning Kraggerud and Henrik Schwarz, one-off projects such as Trialogue, Bugge and Friends, and OKWorld! And of course, the super-trio RYMDEN.

In the 25 years since Bugge Wesseltoft founded Jazzland Recordings, he has engaged in numerous group projects and collaborations such as New Conception of Jazz, duos with the likes of Sidsel Endresen, Henning Kraggerud and Henrik Schwarz, one-off projects such as Trialogue, Bugge and Friends, and OKWorld! And of course, the super-trio RYMDEN. However, it is in his solo material that we can glimpse the true soul behind the effervescent and mercurial mind of one of the most influential and important Norwegian musicians of an entire generation.

On "Be Am", his latest solo album, Wesseltoft has allowed his creative impulses to wander where they may - no preset rules to govern the composition and production, no obligations to (not) use electronics, not even a will to be totally alone. This is pure playing and composition, where the music speaks freely by whatever means it will.

In the more meditative pieces, there is a sense of both natural calm and imposed calm, the difference between which should be apparent to anyone who has suffered the changes of the COVID lockdown periods - there are times when we naturally experience a mental peace, while there are others when we have to bring ourselves, often with great strength of will, to something approximating it.

Many of the pieces here have the feeling of being wordless songs - indeed, no words are needed when the notes convey all that is needed on tracks like "Tide" or "State". The arrival of Håkon Kornstad on the track pairing of "Emergence" and "Roads" shifts the mood from one of peace within solitude to peace within company, the latter track being an understated dialogue, a musical soundtrack for watching the world hustling and bustling, or sleeping its way towards a new day. Tracks such as "Messenger", "Green" and "Be Am" throw more angular shapes, musical shadow-play where unexpected progressions shift to moments of gospel uplift before taking unanticipated shifts towards unexpected harmony. With "Life", kalimba accompanied by birdsong loops, carrying us into a piece that takes tentative but exact steps between positions, like tai chi in musical form. "Gonna Be OK", returns to the moods established at the beginning of the album in more optimistic colouring, while "Deeper" transports us across a unusual exploration of the lower reaches of the piano, uncertain, yet familiar, transforming itself with each new chord. "Sunbeams through leaves softly rustling" closes the album with that beautiful Satie-like melodic simplicity that Bugge has made his own.

The music of "Be Am" carries ghosts of uncertainty, whispers of resignation, and faint echoes of frustration. But throughout there are rays of hope, a warm clear light of peace and tranquility, and growing flames of an unquenchable fire of determination. It is music of, and for, the human soul.

Intimate chamber jazz from Maridalen

The Norwegian jazz trio Maridalen takes its name from the scenic valley that lies just north of Oslo city center.

The trio's debut album "Maridalen", released in spring 2021, has received rave reviews both nationally and internationally.

The album, among many other plaudits, was listed on the lists "Best

Intimate chamber jazz from Maridalen

The Norwegian jazz trio Maridalen takes its name from the scenic valley that lies just north of Oslo city center.

The trio's debut album "Maridalen", released in spring 2021, has received rave reviews both nationally and internationally.

The album, among many other plaudits, was listed on the lists "Best Norwegian of the Year" in Aftenposten, and "Jazz albums of the Year" in British MOJO Magazine.

On March 25, 2022, Maridalen release their second album «Bortenfor» on Jazzland Recordings. Like its predecessor, this album is also recorded in the old wooden church in Maridalen, but this time the trio also moves a little beyond the valley - down to night-lit streets and old apartment buildings.

With the warm and acoustic sound of double bass, trumpet and woodwind, the trio creates their own musical space that captures different moods and spins small stories.

Through these moments, the listener is invited to new adventures; from a city gateway, old and forgotten places are explored: through pictures from a movie, to a ride on a moon bike in dreamland.

The moods and stories are conveyed through a strong collective where the sum is greater than the individual performances - where the space, atmosphere and excitement become an inextricable part of the whole.

The soundscape is intimate, transparent, and provides great opportunity and plenty of space for the three musicians to play. The trio also rounds out the sound with contributions from piano, an old radio and kitchen utensils, with the addition of pedal steel guitarist Emil Brattested on two songs.

"Djupet" began as a commissioned work co-composed by Jo Berger Myhre and Erlend Viken for the Ultima Festival and Riksscenen in 2020. Together, with dancers Ida Wigdel, Ådne Kolbjørnhus and Katja Schia, they explored the common ecstatic potential of, and the links between, folk, improvisational and electronic dance music. Thomas Pohlitz Strønen

"Djupet" began as a commissioned work co-composed by Jo Berger Myhre and Erlend Viken for the Ultima Festival and Riksscenen in 2020. Together, with dancers Ida Wigdel, Ådne Kolbjørnhus and Katja Schia, they explored the common ecstatic potential of, and the links between, folk, improvisational and electronic dance music. Thomas Pohlitz Strønen was producer, and when they recorded the music the week after the premiere, the duo became a trio.

On the album, the electronic elements have receded in favour of foregrounding a dense and closely interknit acoustic interaction that explores the dynamic in the static, and the repetitive, the whole transforming into weightlessness. The trio use individual experiences of improvisation and folk music in search of common roots and unexplored areas in the music, or to perhaps create new spaces. The musicians seamlessly move between improvised pieces, beats by Viken, and fragmentary themes by Myhre, in a highly democratic soundscape where interaction is central. Particularly striking are the unison lines woven between Viken's octave fiddle and Myhre's string bass, suggestive of the sound of an entirely new instrument. Before, behind, between and beyond these two, Strønen engages with his characteristic drumming that orchestrates, elaborates, and drives the music further.

Each member of this trio is individually established and lauded in various branches of the creative Norwegian music scene, where they long ago made a name for themselves with their distinctive solo projects, and their collaborations with innumerable musicians, artists and bands. With "Djupet", they find the cohesiveness within their individual musics for the first time. The music is characterized by subtlety, effortlessly digging deep for an introverted, but unsubdued, ecstasy.