Moose Loose - Live at Kongsberg Jazzfestival 1973 (2023)

The seventies were a magical decade for anyone interested in music that tested and pushed boundaries - the cross-pollination between the rhythmic music originating in the culture of the enslaved and currents from Asia, Africa and the Middle East created exciting results with microtonality, new instruments and unusual scales - some rock bands played with a symphony orchestra, others with saws. The most ambitious stretched the elastic so far that it almost broke… and occasionally it did. Jazz was unfaithful with rock, rock with folk music, pop with contemporary music, everyone was curious about the French gypsy jazz.

A young Norwegian musicians who was noticed was a long-haired guy in a flannel shirt who played the guitar so that it rumbled in the stomach and echoed in the walls. Some suffered permanent hearing damage from standing too close to the speaker when he gave it his all and then some. The guy had grown up with straight jazz, but then he discovered free improvisers like Pharoah Sanders and brilliant innovators like Jimi Hendrix. Jon Eberson, a fast and versatile guitarist, full of both energy and subtlety, that played music in a borderland that had only just opened its gates. With him, Brynjulf Blix on keyboards, Pal Thorstensen on bass and Espen Rud on drums.

Oslo-based Moose Loose was inspired by Miles Davis' electric music, from Bitches Brew onwards, but also by modern jazz musicians such as John Coltrane and style creators in rock such as Jimi Hendrix.It was a young band, all in their early twenties, who stood on stage during the Kongsberg Jazz Festival on this June day in 1973 - on the day 50 years before the result is finally available.

Tracklist
1. Moose Loose
2. O-kjod
3. Ebers Funk
4. Ebers Space
5. Ebers Heavy
6. Easy to Forget
7. Purple
8. Boston Miles