Earlier this year, Jaga Jazzist announced their return with a new single, ‘Spiral Era’, and a new album, Pyramid. Initially slated for an April release, Pyramid had to be postponed due to the global pandemic and will now arrive on August 7th through Brainfeeder. The Norwegian iconic octet have just shared a new single, ‘Tomita’, which pays homage to Japanese composer and pioneering synth player Isao Tomita. ‘Tomita’ comes with an accompanying video directed and animated by Jengo, who had this to say about it:

“The upbeat pace of the song felt fitting to have the character run the whole time, tearing through the desert barely stopping to appreciate the view, with the warm hues of the desert echoing the strong red color of the album cover. Stylistically I knew it had to feel epic and grand yet very minimal and clean, so I was looking at video games for inspiration, mostly Zelda and Journey, some anime and some 70’s sci-fi book covers for the scale and the surrealist feel.”

Watch the video for ‘Tomita’ below.

Photo: Anthony P Huus

Norwegian iconic octet Jaga Jazzist are back with a new album following 2015’s Starfire. Entitled Pyramid, the new album, unlike the previous one, came to life in just two weeks in a woodland studio in Sweden where they secluded themselves working 12-hour days. “The most important thing is that we didn’t want to over-analyze every musical idea”, explained co-founder and drummer Martin Horntveth. “We wanted to follow the first and original idea and keep the freshness.” Pyramid is also their first self-produced album, which was “hard but felt natural”, as Martin said, “as five of us are producers and make records for a living. The result is an album that feels more collaborative than ever.”

The album arrives on April 24th through Brainfeeder but we can already hear the first sterling taste of it in the form of brand new single ‘Spiral Era’.

Norway’s Jaga Jazzist have shared an incredible, moving and weird animated video to accompany ‘Prungen’, the closing track off their latest album Starfire. The video was made by Trista Namo & Fehl Roch and you can watch it below.

Starfire is out now via Ninja Tune.

Norwegian iconic octet Jaga Jazzist, who celebrated their 20th anniversary last year, are releasing a new album in June. Entitled Starfire, the effort is inspired by life in Los Angeles, where Jaga’s main songwriter, Lars Horntveth, moved to in late 2012. “There, on the other side of the world, inspired by the space around him, the size of the sky above him, the endless light flashing past as he drove round the city at night, he began composing the new suite of works which would become Starfire”, describes the press release. It adds that the album sees the band moving to a more experimental studio-led approach. “The idea was that we thought about the songs as both the original song and a remix in one”.
Starfire is due out on June 1st via Ninja Tune. Luckily, we can already get a taster of what they’ll be throwing at us with the colossal title track, a thrillingly sublime and pulsating affair. Listen to ‘Starfire’ below.