Megalodon Collective - The Triumph (2019)

With their second Jazzland Recordings album, Megalodon Collective shows that their bite now comes with more rows of razor-sharp teeth than previously imagined.

"The Triumph", 55 minutes of fearless musical invention, defies categorization as its predecessor, "Animals", did before it, but this time with laser-precision, slicing and dicing and splicing genres and generic tropes with both joyous abandon and hyper-focussed intent. What seems like a post-rock quasi-ambient undulation can soon become a tsunami of ensemble jazz angularity; off-kilter bossa nova metamorphoses into north African dream jams; frantic urban big band riffs break down into math rock staccato rhythms and reassemble and explode at seemingly random intervals (but there's nothing random about any of it – they know what they're doing, when to do it, and why they should); moments of pastoral reverie extend while maintaining a supressed tension as though they might erupt into chaos at any moment; chaotic free jazz jamming breaks out of its vortex into ultra-structured melodic unisons.

Where some bands are like a collection of single cell organisms, each performing their part, Megalodon Collective is a multicellular single organism with the ability to turn and twist mid-flow in ways few can manage outside the realm of MIDI programming. Thematically, the album is a veritable 21st century melange of notions: global warming sits alongside glory and doom, while both treasure and flotsam and jetsam can be found in depths both tumultuous and placid. It is a collection of micro-symphonies for septet, produced by a collective singular voice.

With so many rows of razor-sharp teeth available, Megalodon Collective can never bite off more than they can chew, and the ambition and scale of their musical hunt grows wider and deeper. It's time to enter the water …



Track List:
1. All The Things We Are (4:10)
2. Global Warming? (5:43)
3. The Triumph (5:55)
4. Junk (4:20)
5. Remembering Gazzelloni (7:30)
6. Paradise (4:42)
7. Pontiac (3:12)
8. Polaris (6:14)
9. When Will We Meet Again? (5:22)
10. The End (7:10)

Alto Saxophone [Altosaxophone] – Karl Hjalmar Nyberg
Alto Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Martin Myhre Olsen
Artwork [Art By] – Synne Amanda Salvesen
Design – Rune Mortensen
Double Bass – Aaron Mandelmann
Drums – Andreas Skår Winther, Henrik Lødøen
Electric Guitar – Karl Bjorå*
Mastered By – Giuseppe Ielasi
Recorded By, Mixed By – Marcus Forsgren
Tenor Saxophone – Petter Kraft

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