Morten Schantz: Godspeed review – the jazz kamikazes are back, and won't be leaving

The phrase “21st-century Weather Report” has been applied to the work of thirtysomething Danish keyboardist and composer Morten Schantz, and the sound of that gamechanging phenomenon certainly surfaces here, in the keyboard surges and low-end churn of Schantz’s Escape Velocity and the headlong Ceasefire. For his Edition Records debut, Schantz rekindles his long-running partnership with saxophonist Marius Neset and thrilling Phronesis drummer Anton Eger launched in the JazzKamikaze trio in 2005. Neset, a young master saxist with a delicacy of tone to match his firebrand improv drive, is the ideal horn player for Schantz’s cinematic and often invitingly songlike themes, and the unstoppable Eger turns all the fast pieces up to an engagingly frenzied 11. Schantz gracefully applies his conventional-piano sensitivities to the pop-ballad sway of Growing Sense under Neset’s mellow tenor; Martial Arts is a crunching rocker with a lilting dance in it; the title track memorably mixes a liquid-toned rhythmic loop and a harpsichord-like keys vamp. Sometimes it’s a little over-packed, but Morten Schantz is European jazz name we’re going to get used to hearing.