The debut Hubro album by the highly regarded Norwegian power-trio Bushman’s Revenge – cult stars of the Rune Grammofon label for a decade – operates on several levels simultaneously. It can even sound like the work of several different trios. After a hypnotic experimental prelude that creates a sort of audible weather system, with the delicate, bare-wire glissandos of Even Helte Hermansen’s soprano guitar heard against Gard Nilssen’s Pink Floyd-ish beaten drums and the unusually reticent, elegantly dancing measures of Rune Nergaard’s electric bass, ‘Et Hån Mot Overklassen’ (which Google Translate renders as “A Mockery of the Upper Class’) begins to settle into a form of strikingly virtuosic and proggy jazz-rock; the instruments sound pretty much like guitar, bass and drums are meant to do, and the opening numbers follow a recognisable jazz model of theme/improv/theme.

The Norwegian Jazz trio Bushman’s Revenge mixes the energy of Rock with the freedom of Jazz in an exciting and exhilarating way. Formed in 2003, the trio (consisting of Even Helte Hermansen on Guitar, Rune Nergaard on Bass and Gard Nilssen on Drums) has had two decades in which to explore different paths and sounds, and in doing so, succeeding in creating a genre all of their own.