Atomic

Atomic nearly qualifies as a Scandinavian supergroup devoted to free jazz. It unites the frontline players from Fire House and the Fredrik Noren Band—trumpeter Magnus Broo and saxophonist Fredrik Ljungkvist—with the rhythm section of Element, comprising pianist Håvard Wiik, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love.

The musicians assembled the project to counter the ECM-inflected modern jazz that had come to define “Scandinavian jazz” for listeners around the world, instead advancing a contemporary strain of power jazz rooted in American Fire Music by Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, and Ornette Coleman as well as 1960s European free improvisation typified by Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun.

Broo and Ljungkvist had already been collaborating on the Stockholm scene since the mid-’90s. The Oslo-based members Wiik, Håker Flaten, and Nilssen-Love had overlapped at the Trondheim Music Conservatory in 1994–1995 and performed together in the John Coltrane-inspired group Element. By 1999 the five musicians were regularly crossing paths on Scandinavian club and festival circuits; Ljungkvist, Håker Flaten, and Nilssen-Love further shared time in Per “Texas” Johansson’s group, so mutual familiarity was already in place when they formed Atomic.

Channeling Brötzmann-like intensity through heated heads and pliable compositional frameworks, the band quickly solidified its identity and began touring at once. Early slots at the Oslo Jazz Festival and the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival drew notice, after which the Jazzland label issued the debut album Feet Music, its title taken from a Coleman composition.