Originals and standards given the heavy Scandinavian jazz treatment
Fresh from their crossover collaboration with Neneh Cherry (more please!), heavy Scandinavian jazzers The Thing strike out on their own with Boot! The trio of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrit Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love are renowned for their free jazz takes on rock riffage – Lightning Bolt, PJ Harvey and The Stooges are favourites – but this time it's jazz collosi John Coltrane and Duke Ellington getting the Boot! A short figure is torn from 'Trane's 'India' and loaded inside the molten metal of Gustafsson's bass horn. What emerges is a seething radioactive beast, howling as it's strafed by Nilssen-Love's machine-gun snare volleys. The originals are strong too, particularly 'Reboot', which begins with a sustained howl of feedback and pneumatic drill drumming, before Gustafsson makes a surprise entrance on soprano sax, drawing impossible shapes in the air while Håker Flaten's fuzz bass spits electric filth.