The title of this 2013 release should warn listeners who enjoyed the large-ensemble jazzcraft of the Spinifex Orchestra's 2008 album Triodia that something crazier is afoot. Not that Triodia wouldn't shatter the tender-eared sensibilities of the straight-ahead jazz fan on occasion -- amidst that album's colorful ensemble passages, skillful soloing, and panoply of international influences came the occasional cacophonous outburst and even shards of metal guitar -- but Hipsters Gone Ballistic is something else again. The Spinifex nonet has been trimmed down to a compact quintet here, all the better to navigate some of the herkiest, jerkiest, most wildly manic avant jazz-metal improv ever to punch its way out of Amsterdam's creative music scene. Spinifex founding members trumpeter Gijs Levelt and alto saxophonist Tobias Klein are joined by electric guitarist Jasper Stadhouders, electric bassist Gonçalo Almeida, and drummer Philipp Moser on a set clearly not designed as background music for a romantic candlelit dinner. They burst out of the gate in an off-kilter 9/8 on the opening title track, Levelt and Klein sticking to a single note each in staccato harmony while Stadhouders, Almeida, and Moser crank through the skewed rhythm with a metal crunch. Bits of wild fragmented soloing and ultra-tight unison stops and starts follow, before Levelt and Stadhouders join together in repeated sharp, swift, upward glissandi.

1		Hipsters Gone Ballistic
2		Boo
3		V
4		Joint Strike Focker
5		Rost
6		Lotigus
7		Flying Object Fort Worth / Umea / Sheffield
8		Waste Land Jam
9		Sre Valli Devasenapathe

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