Shake

Two years after their The Thing Records label-debut with the legendary ‘Boot’ album, the
Scandinavian free jazz Vikings release another heavy and wonderful monster of a studioalbum! Intense, passionate and accurately defined, they clearly mark their own genre within a genre!

The Thing’s ‘Shake’ might not quite offer the immediate pleasures of their great Neneh Cherry collaboration but it’s another beezer of an album from the trio – perhaps their finest to date. The sheer energy and physicality of The Thing’s sound is immensely satisfying, fusing the freedom of jazz with the controlled power of rock. When more mainstream jazzers cover rock songs, they tend to work from the melody and chord sequence, an approach that can sound a little glib and underpowered. The Thing, on the other hand, rightly focus on the riff, using it as the basis for improvisation.