1998 · Album
New Conception of Jazz: Sharing
Recorded 1998 · Jazzland Recordings · Produced by Bugge Wesseltoft, Jan Bang
When Jazz Found the Turntable
Wesseltoft proved you could drop samples and beats into acoustic jazz without irony or nostalgia.
New Conception of Jazz: Sharing arrived in 1998 when the jazz world and electronic music world still barely spoke to each other. Bugge Wesseltoft didn't wait for permission. He brought in DJ Strangefruit and DJ Abstract on turntables, added Jan Bang on drum machine, and let Vidar Johansen on soprano saxophone and Erlend Gjerde on trumpet navigate a landscape that was half acoustic, half sampled. The album got immediate attention from listeners ready for something other than the usual post-bop template, though mainstream jazz critics were slower to catch on. It became a cult record first, the kind people pressed into friends' hands when they wanted to prove jazz wasn't a museum piece.
Musically, this works because Wesseltoft's piano is restless and conversational, not trying to anchor anything. When the drums and turntables enter, they don't crash a jazz session—they're part of the breathing. Ingebrigt Håker Flaten's bass guitar holds just enough ground to make the music swing rather than drift. Tracks move between collage and composition, between things that sound almost ambient and sudden moments where everyone locks in. The turntables aren't decorative; they're doing what bass and drums usually do, keeping time and texture shifting.
This is still the record to hear if you want to understand how jazz could talk to electronic music in the late 1990s without sounding dated now. It mattered because it opened a door other musicians walked through. Wesseltoft proved the concept wasn't a gimmick—it was just jazz expanding what it could hear.
Who's playing
Ingebrigt Håker Flatenacoustic bass guitar
Bugge Wesseltoftpiano
Vidar Johansensoprano saxophone
Erlend Gjerdetrumpet
Anders Engendrums
DJ Strangefruitturntable
DJ Abstractturntable
Jan Bangdrum machine
Where next?
More by Bugge Wesseltoft
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