Anders Nilsson's Aorta: Blood

Out of Sweden comes new jazz sounds from guitarist Anders Nilsson's group Aorta, a group that glances briefly back at the late '60s and '70s, then forges ahead, showing some possible directions for the music to go if it is to remain vital. Aorta probably won't be doing a week at the Vanguard any time soon, but if there's any music that can even remotely be called jazz and has any chance of capturing the ears of teens and twenty-somethings (the holy grail in music sales), this is it.

While there are whiffs of Tony Williams' Lifetime and '70s work by John McLaughlin and, of course, Miles Davis, Aorta has its own fingerprint, thanks in large part to Nilsson's twisting compositions. The guitar and horn work is aggressively virtuosic and the rhythm section demonically driving. Aorta revives, refreshes and continues several areas of jazz, some still kicking and others moribund.

Electric jazz has attempted comebacks of late. Aorta plows ahead as if the glory days never passed. Some of Nilsson's compositions seem to show an awareness of the work of contemporary innovators like Henry Threadgill. Finally, Aorta makes daring forays into freely improvised music. Blood is garage jazz at a high level.

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