Cortex 

CD Club, 5 July 2014

A newcomer from Norway (two album releases and approximately 50 concerts), the Cortex quartet is being compared to Atomic, Scandinavia’s possibly most prominent jazz line-up. Indisputable parallels can be drawn in the bands’ energetic performance and technical expertise. But the musical idioms of these two groups are fairly dissimilar: where the Atomic remain committed to their original vision of the most creative new jazz styles (the fifties and sixties), Cortex prefer to explore African as well as oriental melodies, subtly embedding them into a forceful and modern sound that strongly resembles dance-floor jazz. Instead of fragmenting the short and concise compositions or slowing them down, the band occasionally included free and inspired solo passages (especially noteworthy were the contributions by Kristoffer Berre Alberts on sax) into a unified sonic flow that thus retained its consistence and appeal. A promising line-up that deserves to be reheard on Slovenian stages!

Mario Batelić


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Photo Nada Žgank