Inside Outside May 2017

Playing a melodious synthesis of symphonic hard rock that has occcasionally been compared to Pink Floyd, Hanover Krautrockers Jane can trace their origins back to the late sixties psychedelic band Justice Of Peace. Releasing a single Save Me/War, the band featured future Jane members Peter Panka on vocals, Klaus Hess on bass and Werner Nadolny on saxophone…

While the Norwegian jazz scene has been pursuing its own course for decades, the period of 1996-1997 represented a significant watershed, a milestone where an entirely new kind of music emerged, linked to jazz but distanced considerably—some might say completely, but they'd be mistaken—from its roots in the American tradition. Three seminal and groundbreaking albums were released within a year of each other: trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær's Khmer (ECM, 1997); noise improv group Supersilent's 1- 3 (Rune Grammofon, 1997); and, beating the others by a year, keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft's aptly titled New Conception of Jazz (Jazzland, 1996). All three explored the integration of electronics, disparate cultural references, programming, turntables and—especially in the case of Supersilent, the most avant-garde of the three— noise, to create aural landscapes that were innovative, otherworldly and refreshingly new.

For any band to follow up on a success is not an easy task, and even in the best circumstances, coming back from the massive success of "Dark side of the moon" could have been an impossible task for Pink Floyd . Unfortunately, when they returned to the studio in January 1975, conditions were far from favorable within the group, for various reasons, in particular the fact that, after having adapted their lives to their worldwide success, the members of the group found themselves more disoriented than satisfied. The problem was made worse by a growing disconnect between bassist Roger Waters and the rest of Pink Floyd, especially guitarist David Gilmour.