Vidar Johansen has been a mainstay of the Norwegian jazz scene for more years than he probably would care to remember, not just as an accomplished, warm-toned soloist, but as a composer and arranger as well. This album is a celebration of his compositional skill, dusting off pieces that “have been lost in sacks of handwritten manuscript paper for decades”.

On the evidence of this album, if his bottom drawer has got any more songs like these, he should let them see the light of day now. The compositions on Gnus have, in the main, been written for other bands and ensembles rather than his own, not least ‘Song For An Absent Piano Player’, that Mercer Ellington asked him to arrange for his [Ellington's] own big band. And perhaps here is the key – his compositions clearly come from the American jazz tradition, but are re-imagined through the prism of Johansen's Nordic influences and imagination. The enigmatically titled ‘Gnus’ (is this the animal Flanders and Swann sung about?) turns out to be an album highlight, along with the aforementioned song for an absent pianist, the intriguingly titled ‘Busken Smout’ and ‘Osckar's Dream’.