Live Jive Jungle

Live Jive Jungle performing at La Fontaine. Photo by Frank Roberts.
Live Jive Jungle performing at La Fontaine. Photo by Frank Robert Larsen.

Live Jive Jungle is a jazz group led by tenor saxophonist Jan Harbeck. The band was born out of the rowdy atmosphere at La Fontaine, the oldest jazz club in Copenhagen.

Inspired by Gene Krupa‘s drumming the music is high-energy, jungle-jazz with emphasis on interplay and fiery solos. The quartet has played extensively in Denmark and Germany.

Elevate, the debut album by Live Jive Jungle, was recorded at Sweet Silence by Flemming Rasmussen. Flemming is also the engineer behind Metallica‘s first couple of albums.

Harbeck’s soloing has the straight-ahead sound of early bop players, and this is countered by the sounds that Madsen rings from his guitar – which are as often as not filtered through more contemporary sounds, and laden with effects from a variety of pedals. For example, his solo in track 3 ‘Sidewalkin’ inherits 1950s lick but are played through wobbly, vibrato-heavy effects that push the sounds into the 1960s.

Chris Baber for Jazzviews.com. Read full review.

Jan Harbeck / Thor Madsen / Jeppe Skovbakke /Peter Leth – Sundance 2017

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