GAZPACHO

Feeling lucky, punk? The Norwegian art-rockers explore randomness, chance and more focused songwriting on their 12th album.

- Polly Glass

Gazpacho is a ridiculous name, yet the Norwegian band's music is anything but. Since the late 90s they've cultivated progressive vignettes with the imagery and transportive powers of twisted fairy tales, even as they face profoundly human questions. It's fiercely intelligent music, delivered with the light touch of first-rate songwriters – which they are. By day, singer Jan-Henrik Ohme works for Sony Music Norway, while keyboard player Thomas Andersen is a composer who's written jingles for major ad campaigns, as well as solo piano records.

Perhaps it's in response to this that they've become masters of introspective, conceptual records, devoid of concessions to anything so limiting as commercial potential. Molok (2015) was a head-spinning meditation on conflicts between the emotional and rational mind, via Norwegian folklore with a side of quantum physics. On 2018's Soyuz they contemplated the passing of time with detours into Russian space history and Tibetan funeral practices. Five years on from their last release, however, the band are ready to do something different. Something shorter, sharper, noisier. The end result – their 12th album – isn't perhaps as different as this premise implies. But there's a bite and a focus to Magic 8-Ball that's sometimes been missing from their dense, cerebral depths of late.

In the aftermath of 2020's