The second album of the Swedish-Norwegian trio sets the genre-breaking Way away: Wesseltoft, Öström and Berglund are enthusiastic and eager to experiment between rock and jazz.
Jazzland releases less than a year and a half after the release of the debut Recordings is now the second effort by Scandinavian supergroup Rymden. pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, drummer Magnus Öström and bassist Dan Berglund found 2019 very well received by the press and the public alike: “Rymden combine atmospheric songwriting with rhythmic complexity and the highest level of virtuosity.” (Kulturnews).“Rymden's music is beautiful, poetic and at the same time special radical.” (Wolf Kampmann, Jazz Thing). The debut album reached the Top 60 of the German pop charts. Marked "Reflections & Odysseys" a first expedition into Earth orbit, the new album catapults the three jazz veterans even further. "Space Sailors" is now Rymden's trip to Mars. "We sound more like a band now," says Bugge Wesseltoft about the trio, whose name means "space" in German, but also "Space". You could hear a carefree freshness on the debut, but it got worse recorded only three joint concerts and two rehearsals. 70 concerts later "Space Sailors" shows a well-established group whose cohesion is complete new subtle details and grand sound gestures in music.
All three musicians were born in the early 1960s, all grew up with jazz, fusion, prog rock and folk music. “We like this Scandinavian program Metal thing," Bugge said in 2019, an element that's reinforced on the new album finds. Many song ideas for “Space Sailors” came from sound checks and concerts. More experimentation, more electro-acoustic exploration, yet Rymden never let their auditory space missions become an end in themselves. "The Life and Death of Hugo Drax" (a nod to the James-Bond villain in "Moonraker" immediately wakes you up with an abysmal sombre bass Memories of the seventies, of the brute hard rock of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Heavy grooves performed with almost punk energy, also in “The final goodbye". Bugge's shimmering keyboards on "Arriving At Ramajay" are reminiscent the cosmic excursions of psychedelic gods like Pink Floyd.
