MARIUS NESET - GOLDEN XPLOSION EDN1027

5/5 star live review:

Guardian – read here in full (John Fordham)

“Marius Neset is one of the most exciting international jazz newcomers of the past year. The 25-year-old sax player crackles with youthful energy, and much of the first London performance of his UK tour saw the Norwegian frenetically weaving and rocking his way through music much closer to the upfront, contemporary-American jazz-sax style of the late Michael Brecker or New York’s Chris Potter”.

"There are plenty of credible heirs to the sax legacy of the late Michael Brecker, but most mimic Brecker's hurtling virtuosity without adding much colour of their own. Marius Neset, the 25-year-old Norwegian saxophonist who surfaced in the UK last year with Django Bates (his teacher and mentor at Copenhagen's Rhythmic Music Conservatory), not only combines Brecker's power and Jan Garbarek's tonal delicacy, but has a vision that makes all 11 originals on this sensational album feel indispensable, and indispensably connected to each other. Bonuses include an inspired Bates on piano and synths, and the formidable Phronesis rhythm section of bassist Jasper Høiby and drummer Anton Eger. The title track begins as a contrapuntal tenor-sax soliloquy that becomes a funky clamour when the band arrives; the breakneck-bop theme of City on Fire demonstrates the group's breathtaking tightness; the multiphonic Saxophone Intermezzo is a majestic hymn; and the lyrical, cruising Angel of the North is like a sax-led Pat Metheny band. On this evidence, Neset is on his way to being one of the biggest new draws on the circuit". GUARDIAN *****

1. Introducing: Golden Xplosion
2. Golden Xplosion
3. City on Fire
4. Sane
5. Old Poison (XL)
6. Shame Us
7. Saxophone Intermezzo
8. The Real Ysj
9. Saxophone Intermezzo II
10. Angel of the North
11. Epilogue