Master Oogway – The Concert Koān (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 34:56 minutes | 407 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Clean Feed
Prepared for a new surprise coming from the Norwegian front? Master Oogway is a band with a Miles Davis feeling (and particularly the one of his Sixties records), a saxophone style rooted in the heritage of Ornette Coleman and the great free jazz original soloists, applied by tenorist Lauritz Lyster Skeidsvoll, and that kind of energy and distorted sound you only find in rock, coming very specially from the hands of guitarist Håvard Nordberg Funderud. All this glued by a rhythm section (bassist Karl Erik Horndalsveen and drummer Martin Mellem) acting like a riff engine and a concept inspired in the mythology of the movie “Kung Fu Panda” – the character Oogway, an elderly tortoise, is the creator of kung fu and the keeper of the Dragon Warrior legend, who he finally meets before ascending to the Spirit Realm. Listen to “The Concert Koān” and feel free to find out any metaphors concerning the spiritual nature of jazz. The music grooves constantly, but not in a linear way: it’s full of sudden stops and changes of metrics and directions, combining composition and improvisation in such a way you can’t differentiate the written and the spontaneously created. Either the subject is a travel to Mars or the kind of gum you prefer, the songs make you stand up and jump. As Master Oogway used to say, «you must let go of the illusion of control».
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Master Oogway – Earth and Other Worlds (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:28 minutes | 482 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rune Grammofon
It is with great pleasure we can introduce a new name to our roster. Master Oogway are four young musician aged between 23 and 26. They met at the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2015 with a common desire to play vibrant, improvised music with strong themes and room for spontaneity at a high energy level. Like many players on the young, Norwegian progressive jazz scene their instrumental skills are already highly developed. “Earth And Other Worlds” is the quartet´s second album, their debut was released on the Clean Feed label in 2018. Their new effort is more dynamic and varied and shows more mature and accomplished songwriting, not to mention the stronger group interactions and the impressive solo stretches from sax player Lauritz Lyster Skeidsvoll and guitarist/composer Håvard Nordberg Funderud. It´s possible to place them in the same musical landscape as Bushman´s Revenge or Kokofant, but they are already in possession of a vital and personal signature, with a general approach and attitude that comes with a slightly stronger emphasis on jazz.
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