Coup De Grâce (1997-2007)

Ten year career retrospective on !K7 for soul-trip-hop-jazz artist Koop. The music here is eleven tracks of premier lounge gear from Sweden, from swinging 60's jazz drums, elegant grooves and weird library inflected electronics. Swedish jazz romanticists Oscar Simonsson and Magnus Zingmark collect the best of their work between 1997-2007 for K7. The genre-bending jazz composers work with a wide range of vocalists and highly skilled players to achieve their stylish sound, conflating 30's swingbeat with imported original mento and big-band flourishes. 'Coup De Grace' is an impressive display of diversity within their nominated style, providing singers Ane Brun, Yukimi Nagano, Hilde Louise Asbjørnsen and Earl Zinger with highly authentic and sophisticated backings weaved from both electronic and sampled organic sources, but never explicitly one or the other. The adventurous 'Glömd' features singer Stina Nordenstam on a bed of bristling machine beats and rich double bass, whie the bossa-lite 'Summer Sun' coats gorgeous marimba samples with beaming vocals and dusty jazz drum loops before Hilde Louise Asbjørnsen steal the show on the suave float of 'Strange Love' which sounds like some dreamy Angelo Badalementi composition. Fans of Gilles Peterson's radio shows, Badalamenti soundtracks and the exploits of Jimi Tenor should give this some time.