Norway’s premier post-Americana atomisers Chrome Hill don daredevil quintet formation for their latest full-length, ranks bolstered once more by kindred trailblazing pilgrims, Japanese psych-jazz duo Dōjō. Flitting daringly between the vehemently chaotic and sumptuously serene, the dexterous amalgams on the aptly named Free Rangers broil with alien spaghetti-western semaphore, fire music fever dreams and fragmentary gagaku ceremonials, building on the audacious groundwork mapped out by these ensembles’ previous team-up, 2023’s Live at Aketa No Mise.

But while that collection – its title taken from the venerable Tokyo jazz club where it was recorded during a live performance in 2020 – leaned heavily into the Norwegians’ love affair with dustbowl dynamics and widescreen twangcore, the return leg is entirely devoted to improvisation – a recording unmatched in Chrome Hill’s distinguished canon – the balance between two distinctive soundworlds more evenly split.

Recorded on September 13, 2024, at Oslo’s Amper Tone Studio, this absorbing collaboration courses with galvanic pep, echoing dispatches from Blade Runner’s rampant commercial zones in dazzling hybrids of intoxicating jargons and multiplying tonal light. Asbjørn Lerheim’s jittery electric guitar and Michiyo Yagi’s fractious koto pelter frolic skittishly across the protean rhythms provided by Roger Arntzen’s supple double-bass thrum and Tamaya Honda’s tub-thumping abstractions, while Atle Nymo strikes a devil’s bargain between bop heritage and bold extemporising escapades, sax switching between bacon-frying sizzle, cosmic soar and hissy fit at the drop of a nickel.

Free Rangers quarantines its moments with an alchemical focus, microscopic yet far-seeing, extending its gamut across the prairie-land fantasias of Chrome Hill’s Louis L’Amour-inspired panoramas and beyond, to a phantasmagorical other place, where insectoid armadas infiltrate derelict remnants of Nikko’s abandoned Western Village theme park, pollinating an animatronic cowboy’s last chance saloon with inventories of sweetest honey.

Listen to FREE RANGERS

Music by Chrome Hill & Dōjō except “The Showdown” by Lerheim-Arntzen-Yagi and “Trident” by Yagi-Honda- Nymo

Recorded by Tomas Pettersen at Amper Tone Studio, Oslo, Norway on September 13, 2024 | Mixed by Johnny Skalleberg at Amper Tone Studio, Oslo, Norway | Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, Oslo, Norway | Produced by Chrome Hill and Mark E. Rappaport | Executive production for Trem Azul by Pedro Costa | Design and artwork by Travassos