Lars Horntveth - Kaleidoscopic

Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Lars Horntveth has recorded a wordless, film-music-inspired 37-minute suite with the Latvian National Orchestra — and instead of the pretentious mess you might expect, the resulting album, Kaleidoscopic, is a wildly delightful success.

Best-known as the leader of the experimental rock band Jaga Jazzist, Horntveth combines familiar sounds into strange new forms: orchestral folk songs, neoclassical electronica, ambient jazz, lonely-highway tango. The shifting flow of styles and melodies evokes Bernard Herrmann’s scores for Alfred Hitchcock’s films — but this “soundtrack” doesn't need a movie to come to life.

in Very Shortlist