In the history of jazz-rock, jazz instilled rock with a new sense of improvisation and chorus, while rock in return injected jazz with a revolutionary new sound. On their latest album, Electrique, the Orchestre National de Jazz, conducted by the talented vibraphone-player Franck Tortiller, take listeners on a journey to the very epicentre of jazz-rock, a style that sent shockwaves through the music world when it first emerged in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s.

While rock celebrated its heyday at Woodstock in 1969, jazz underwent its own renaissance that same year thanks to virtuoso trumpeter Miles Davis and his two seminal albums : Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way. These musical manifestos heralded the dawn of a new jazz sound, one which melded the energy of electric rock with the boldest of experimental jazz harmonics. Jazz-rock was an innovative and surprising invention – and all the more so because it encouraged explorations in multiple directions. What’s more, a throughly eclectic range of artists claimed the movement as their own, everyone from Carla Bley to Herbie Hancock, via John McLaughlin, The Weather Report and even Zappa declaring jazz-rock affiliation.

Now, on their new album, Electrique, the ONJ have pulled off the quasi-impossible task of inventing something new, without resorting to reproducing what the jazz-rock giants of the past created before them. The tracks on Electrique explode with life, fuelled as they are by a powerful staccato groove from the brass section. Meanwhile, the bass/drums duo, the beating heart of the ONJ, is subtly coated in samples by Claude Gomez and provides a solid foundation from which the soloists can launch into a prolific series of ideas. A first listen to Electrique can be rather disconcerting, as the album appears to be suspended in a sort of no-man’s land between rock and big band jazz. But subsequent listens prove that the two are cleverly dosed in equal measure - resulting in a mix that the founding fathers of jazz-rock themselves would appreciate!