Mixing it up with country, salsa, rock, and jazz into one giant, delicious smoothie, there’s not a chance that Norway’s own Bushman’s Revenge are coming to a stop sign when it comes to the magnificent arrangements that is like a jet engine, going at 800 miles per hour. Since they’ve been around for 23 years, releasing ten studio albums in the can and one live album, between Jazzaway, Hubro Music, and their time with the Rune Grammofon label, their home with Is It Jazz Records shows that they fit right at home with the Karisma sub-label.
That and their new album Ah, Les Vaches!, which literally means, “Ah, the Cows!” in French, shows more exquisite beauty, ‘50s rockabilly, and literally taking in more grooves to fill in the voids to prove that their more than just a jazz-rock electronica group. In these ten compositions, you feel as if Hermansen, Nergaard, and Nilssen have taken up the ante by going more into this psychedelic swirl in an art deco fashion which captures the eeriness and surreal abandonment the houses are in perfect state, but lost in time.
I wouldn’t compare it to the Eagles (God, no!), nor the West Coast sound, but taking me back to the wonderous beauty of The Last Hurrah’s album Mudflowers that speaks volume and returning back to their Rune Grammofon years. You feel as if you’re in the middle of the Mojave Desert as we see the trio recording this album, late in the evening, coyote’s howling, with a campfire burning brightly in the warm, moonlit night.
Tracks such as ‘Radyrparet’, ‘And Guilt Was His Name-O’, and ‘Bram’ will take you back into the Spaghetti Western genres of the Italian cinema in the mid-to-late 1960s where it was riding high during the beginning of what was known as the New Hollywood-era where filmmakers were breaking rules and changing the film industry. It does have that Western-like quality in where the Bushman were writing this music for the three Sergio’s; Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, and Sergio Sollima.
That’s how wonderful the compositions really are because the trio have known their source material very well. Not to mention the nod at the very end of ‘Bram’ where they channel the early Floyd, tipping their hat to the song ‘Embryo’ which speaks heavy volume, but in a country-like tangle.
But it’s ‘Barbara’ where they are on their motorcycles driving down this deserted highway in the hottest part of the summer in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the southwestern part of the States, writing this arrangement for Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, and Linda Ronstadt, but, also adding in that, should I say mellotron-like structure to fit in that atmospheric lullaby?
When I think of ‘Pauseakvariet’, I think straight away of the Ren & Stimpy shorts during their first season, certainly The Boy Who Cried Rat where Ren Hoek sneaks inside the house in the middle of the night, preparing to dress up as Mickey Mouse in 1991 during Nickelodeon’s golden-era. This is what I think of Ah, Les Voches. I think of the beauty, the walk in the middle of the night where its calm, scary, quiet, but relaxing at the same time in which the band have this rich sound that is purely breathtaking.
So, if you’re up for a bit of relaxation, calmness, and preparing to drive in the middle of the desert, Bushman’s Revenge will be the perfect soundtrack for your earbuds as you rev your motorcycle and head off into the Vegas desert in its pure quietness and pure surrealism that’s waiting for you.
