Cortex - Legal Tender (2020)

Free jazz? Well, not exactly. This quartet from Norway took that tradition as a basis, but the original African-American free jazz never sounded like this. The magazine Jazzwise chose better words to describe Cortex’s blasts of energy: «Avant-garde party music». Instead of the pathways to spiritual ascension, or the revolt against the Man, Thomas Johansson, Kristoffer Berre Alberts, Ola Høyer and Gard Nilssen play music to party to and to be joyful, and that’s also political and sacred in these times of suffering, hatred and disbelief. The composed themes are simple and with no ornaments, giving to the improvised developments all the needed space and all the complexity we like to hear in creative music. The pieces are intense, dramatic and noisy, inviting you to move your body and constantly defying your mind and your soul. Do you remember when Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, or John Zorn and Dave Douglas, played together? Cortex is that next thing you were waiting for…