When I first wrote this for print, it was a toss-up between this and the Amsterdam Klezmer Band but since then, this has been played 1,769,452 times and the Klezmer, twice.
Smag På Dig Selv are from Copenhagen and this is their second album. It is awesome.
They blend electronic sounds with jazz instrumentation, somewhere between Ozric Tentacles (or Gong), Leftfield and Sun Ra. (“Vik’s Rawcore” combines sax with “Phat Planet”.)
Opening track “Like A Word I Never Knew” opens like “Phat Planet” (the throbby Guinness ad music) and within seconds you know you’re going to enjoy it. It is utterly infectious. After a pulse of synth and some industrial sound effects comes a slow, late-night and dreamy saxophone, a contrast to what came before, later becoming the music for a chase across misty hillsides, unsettling but also almost danceable.
“Let’s Go!” opens with bubbling synth and kick drum before the sax leads in a jazz-heavy dance tune (a bit Pigbag). “Interlude” follows, a dreamy and mesmeric minute, like Steve Hillage on sax.
“Vik’s Rawcore” has already been mentioned; Vik is vibraphonist Viktoria Søndergaard and a gentle start morphs into “Phat Planet” on acid after being introduced to a Spanish summer radio hit. It just gets madder until it’s like bricks being banged on wood; marvellous.
It is followed with hardly a pause by “Ya Tal3een”, a massive, sombre Palestinian folk song that features vocalist Luna Ersahin that would kill every sound in a concert hall as the audience listened, rapt. It sort-of doesn’t fit in at all but then kinda does, too.
There are some spoken-word sections, with Thorbjørn Øllgaard mostly in Danish except for random words in English.
Towards the end is “Hits for Kids Vol 300”, which is bonkers and combines an insane double-speed version of Robert Miles’ “Children” with the melody played on distorted sax, and a plank hitting a brick apparently provides the kick drum; it is both impossible not to be cheered up by this and also impossible ever to listen to the original again, now sounding impossibly anodyne. “Our Mothers Made a Punk Band” closes, their mothers in a punk band, apparently.
If you fancy mad jazz with dancefloor leanings (or were a fan of Pigbag), a Palestinian folk song that will leave you stunned or a Danish child apparently saying “chaps”, give this a listen.
Go to smagpaadigselv.bandcamp.com.
