Bugge Wesseltoft - Somewhere in Between

The Guardian 80

(Jazzland)

Bugge Wesseltoft, the visionary Norwegian keyboardist, composer and producer, founded the Jazzland label in the 90s to document the avant-funky, post-Miles jazz world of young Oslo clubbers, and this double album celebrates 20 years of his New Conception of Jazz project, with singers Sidsel Endresen and Dhafer Youssef, saxist Joshua Redman, and guests from across jazz, world music and electronica. Though much of it is beats-based, Wesseltoft incorporates a swathe of idioms from soul-jazz to African choral and percussion sounds, Bill Evans-like solo piano jazz ballads, violin-led traditional folk songs, and loose postbop, inventively winding it all over straitlaced electronics hooks. The 2002 tracks with Endresen are haunting standouts, particularly the pulsing, dreamily intimate Out Here, In There. But hardliners assuming that Wesseltoft abandoned jazz might be surprised by how much there is on this mix of old tracks and reworked New Conception hits, such as the 2016 version of Existence, a Fender Rhodes chillout classic, and the composer’s best-known theme.