The prolific Norwegian drummer-composer Gard Nilssen’s 17-piece orchestra boasts a scary line-up, a distinguished international cast of Scandinavian contemporary jazz royalty. Recorded ‘live’ at Mondriaan Jazz Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands, for the most part they deliver with as much skill as abandon, a boisterous, cacophonic collective barrage of free jazz - Sun Ra, Ayler and spiritual song are among the discernible influences - and a progressive bop-fuelled frenzy.

It’s perhaps inevitable with such a sax-heavy line-up plus three drummers and three bassists, the latter taking its inspiration from the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band. But they occasionally come up for air too, offering both a hypnotic ambience and widescreen cinematic-like simmer at times. The themes are written and arranged by bandleader-drummer Nilssen and multi-reedist Andre Roligheten and are jumping off points that offer plenty of support structure to the adrenalin-rush of solos and collective interaction.