'With every release from the Jazzland label, it becomes clear the sound of jazz is being changed for good.'

In just five years, the Norwegian based Jazzland label has become established as a Europe-wide phenomenon. With its forward looking musical policy and adventurous music, it has become a refreshing wind of change that no one can ignore, 'A new cutting edge,' said the French newspaper *Liberation, * 'Could this be the dawn of a new jazz millennium?' asked London's *Evening Standard. * After almost twenty years of retro jazz from America, the nu music from the Jazzland label is fast changing the musical landscape, even causing reverberations in the home of jazz itself, 'Europeans cut in with a new jazz sound and beat,' said a major article in *The New York Times* featuring photos of keyboard player and label boss Bugge Wesseltoft and trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer.

What sets Jazzland's music apart is the way it embraces the liberating potential of dance music - mixing and matching European techno, drum n' bass, house, ambient and jazz improvisation in a way that clicks with club culture yet is welcomed by open minded jazz fans who can see jazz withering on the vine. Described in Tower Records' *Jazz Guide* as, 'A new realm of music and experience that emerges from club culture,' DJs were the first onto Jazzland's new sounds, and soon crowds were queueing around the block to hear artists from the label. 'To me it seems European musicians are more progressive now than jazz players in America,' Wesseltoft says. 'They want ultra new stuff, trying to mix and merge new musical cultures together.'

Within eighteen months of release, Wesseltoft's *New Conception of Jazz* had won a Norwegian Grammy and sold in excess of 40,000 copies across Europe -- incredible figures for a small independent label. 'Jazzland have a jewel in their catalogue called Bugge Wesseltoft,' said Spain's *Rock de Lux* magazine. In the past European jazz musicians had looked to America as a source of stylistic inspiration, but Wesseltoft's generation believe American jazz is so shackled to 'The Jazz Tradition' it's stifling creativity. 'This traditional American jazz is brilliant in many ways,' says drummer and Jazzland star Audun Kleive, 'But it's still like a snapshot of 25 years ago. Like a museum. I know people like to go back again and change styles with 20 years ago, pants with wide legs, boots up to the knees, large soles, this all part of marketing trends, but not in music!'

Because of the relative isolation of Norway, tucked away in Europe's northwest corner away from mainstream culture, the music scene there has developed in a way quite unlike the rest of Europe. It's a scene that not only encourages musical experimentation, it expects it. 'For the eight or ten years there's been a very good, enthusiastic audience open to new ideas,' explains Wesseltoft. 'I'm lucky to live in Norway. In Oslo the music scene is very open, especially with the younger people. As long as its good music and rhythm they come and listen.'

This Norwegian willingness to embrace new sounds has encouraged musicians to develop their own distinctive musical personalities, 'Coming out of the Norwegian jazz scene I realised there was an identity of Norwegian jazz which was important,' continues Wesseltoft. 'The roots come from America, but we still transform it into a Norwegian way of playing jazz, which is more mellow maybe. I mean you can like or you can dislike it, but it's something on its own. I always enjoyed groove music, so what I tried to do was a mixture of groove music, but still trying to keep the atmosphere of the Nordic jazz thing.'

When Wesseltoft recorded *New Conception of Jazz* in 1995-6, he quickly discovered the only way to get his music out there was to release it himself. 'I formed my own record label, which I called Jazzland. Then I had control over the product, because my kind of music would not have been a high priority for a big record company. The first six months nothing really happened, it sold OK in Norway, six months after that people called me up from France -- they want the album, then Germany, then the United Kingdom and so on. Since hooking up with Universal it's been going well.'

After the success of his own *New Conception of Jazz, * Wesseltoft turned to other musicians he knew in the Oslo jazz underground to record for his label. 'I called up my friends whom I had already been working with for years -- Eivind Aarset, Audun Kleive and Jon Balke. We've have this scene in Norway playing a mix of electronic music and acoustic music in an improvised jazz environment, so that's how it all got started.' The label's second release was Eivind Aarset's *Electronique Noir,* which *The New York Times* called 'One of the best post-Miles albums -- period.'

Recently, Aarset's follow-up album *Light Extracts* has continued his mould-breaking brand of jazz and beats.' 'My approach has come out of the Nordic jazz thing inspired by people like Jan Garbarek and Terje Rypdal, and the serious ECM approach to music mixed with Techno beats,' explains Aarset. 'It's about electronics and jazz, focussing on new sounds but not loosing that energy that music ought to have.'

Aarset's dramatic soundscapes fits what Wesseltoft calls 'the labels profile,' something he was very conscious of building from the start, 'A Company like ECM has such a strong profile, this is very important. I wanted to mark out a certain direction; the only way a label can survive and be something is to have a direction and have interesting music that fits into that direction.'

But it's not only instrumentalists who have created their own space in Norwegian Nu-Jazz. Vocalist Sidsel Endressen has taken her cue from the instrumentalists to create a sophisticated nu vocal world of her own, 'As far away from reinventing the Blue Note sound as you can imagine,' said UK's *Jazzwise* magazine. In contrast, singer Beady Belle travels by a more direct rhythmic route, going up to the doorstep of pop, yet somehow retaining a rigorousness and integrity that did not succumb to pop's honeyed edges, 'This magnificent Norwegian offering deserves to be discovered big time by fans,' said *DJ* magazine, 'Dangerously addictive,' said *Jazzwise. *

The breadth of experimental music on the Jazzland label is remarkable. Where the label scores is with its obvious jazz ethos -- Wesseltoft has recorded with artists such as Jan Garbarek, Jon Christensen and Arild Andersen -- and an impressive line-up of artists such as Wibutee, Jon Balke, Beady Belle, Eivind Aarset, Atomic and Audun Kleive who all share Wesseltoft's vision of the future, a future that crosses and re-crosses musical boundaries.

Wesseltoft's conviction is that jazz is a performance art and insists that Jazzland artists go out and tour their music. 'You have to believe in your music, if you believe in it you will succeed,' he says. 'It has to take some suffering, I don't have a problem with that. I've been playing live as much as I can and can see my audience is growing. I also see that if other Jazzland artists don't play outside Norway, they won't sell CDs, so this is the way we have to do it. You have to do good concerts to get an audience, but that's okay. It's fair somehow.'

Jazzland's nu, ultra-hip sound of the Oslo underground has scored a double whammy, a hit with European underground dance audiences and a nu force in jazz that's widely recognised as being more exciting and more dynamic than the American retro jazz scene. It is here that the label has scored, with each new release re-writing jazz history. In a recent interview jazz giant Herbie Hancock said he was checking out Norwegian Nu-jazz while recording his latest album *Future 2 Future. * Not for nothing one commentator said that 'With every release from the Jazzland label, it becomes clear the sound of jazz is being changed for good.'