It was an apt coincidence that just as the swirling arctic winds that had been sweeping down Oslo’s streets a few days before and were now chilling the pavements in London too, that Nordic power-prog jazz trio Elephant9 should show up to heat up the stage of the Borderline for their UK debut earlier this week. Led by the wiry, shaven-headed figure of keyboards wizard Ståle Storløkken, best known for his long standing work with Supersilent as well as electro keys/drums duo Humcrush, Elephant9 are a bruising and brutal unit completed by the extraordinary punk funk bass work of Nikolai Eilertsen and whirling drumming of Torstein Lofthaus.

Any apprehension that this debut appearance would fail to draw a crowd was soon dispelled as a distinctly hairy throng filled the appropriately grungy basement rock and folk venue of the Borderline, it was also thanks to cult prog-metal headliners Motorpsycho also making a rare appearance that ensured a full house. Both bands reflect the emerging trend for intense rock and metal-fuelled sounds that have become a big part of the current Norwegian scene, yet it also comes with a willingness to push boundaries and maintain an improvisational edge no matter how loud the amps are cranked.

Sounding like the bastard love child of Bugge Wesseltoft’s New Directions In Jazz and Motorhead, Elephant9 have the swagger of a band that’s been forging its sound in the Norwegian clubland for some time and they began with a typically Scandi jazz backdrop of brooding organ atmospherics, long bass tones reverberating and dripping cymbal washes emphasising the threat of a monster groove approaching. Which inevitably it did with Storløkken’s Lesley cabinet roaring into life as he punched heavy chords and shards of melody over a freight train of a groove. As the set continued through revamped tunes from their fantastic debut album Walk The Nile, the energy ebbed and flowed with the trio’s obvious rapport building to some truly thunderous grooves, all flavoured with Storløkken’s spicy, cascading improvisations yet cajoled and corralled by the urgency of Eilertsen’s uncompromising bass playing, which sees him attack his beaten looking Fender with a punkish energy normally reserved for thrash guitar merchants.

For all the machismo in his three-way tug of war there’s a welcome psychedelic edge to the E9 sound warping and winding ugly beautiful harmonies and hypnotic grooves into a head-spinning vortex. This is the sound of a headbanging party on the frozen tundra, not some chin stroking exercise in clever jazz deconstruction. The smouldering set left many first time listeners shaking their heads in admiration at Elephant9’s molten mix of white hot Hammond-fuelled distorto funk grooves and knife-edge interplay and proved that there’s a strong UK audience for this brand of noisy Norwegian nu-jazz. It all bodes well for their return next year for a full UK tour, and with another freezing winter predicted it looks like we’ll need some of their volcanic heat to thaw us out come 2011.

For further listening visit www.myspace.com/elephant9theband

- Mike Flynn