There’s nothing retro about Helge Sunde’s Norwegian big band Ensemble Denada – the opening cut features Peter Baden on ‘percutronics’, not something Ted Heath made much use of back in the day. This is very much large-ensemble writing in the smart, po-mo vein of Frank Zappa or Django Bates then; and very good it is too. The album title alludes to the capacity to make use of unexpected opportunities: ‘A swimming moose, swimming a West Norwegian fjord far away from its usual habitat can become a jazz song in 5/4’, suggests a sleeve note. ‘A misplaced letter U in the itinerary for a jazz teaching class can turn into a weird tune about a sofa on a wild sleighride down a steep hillside.’ Presumably that explains (sort of) how Sunde came to write tracks two, ‘Moosic’, and one, ‘The Speedcouch (sic)’, respectively. More sombrely, ‘(The Road to) Damascus’ celebrates the more pacific charms of the currently war-torn Syrian capital, which happens to be where the troupe played their first non-European gig. All in all, it’s a smart piece of work.