Post-rockProgressive Rock
Karisma Records · 30 October 2026
The Samuel Jackson Five released “A Passage to Elsewhere” on 30 October. According to Karisma Records, it’s the Norwegian instrumental quintet’s first full-length in nearly a decade, and their first release with the label. It’s out on CD, digital and orange vinyl, with artwork by visual artist David Crunelle. It runs to eight tracks and around 44 minutes, opening with the title track and closing with “Bright Galaxies, Dark Matters”.
The band debuted in 2004 with “Same Same But Different” and, the label says, have now left behind the vocal experiments of “The Samuel Jackson Five” (2012) and “Ghost Karaoke” (2017) to return to a purely instrumental format. The album was produced and recorded by the group itself, led by multi-instrumentalist Thomas Meidell and drummer Sven Andrén, who mixed it at Klokkereint, his studio just outside Gjøvik.
Regular collaborators return, among them saxophonist Dag Stiberg (Trollfest) and violinist Magnus Nielsen, who has played on every one of the band’s albums since the debut, and they’re joined by Ola Mile Bruland (Actionfredag, Jordsjø), who plays upright bass on “Temporary Happiness Revival”, Åsa Ree (Meer) and experimental artist Jenny Berger Myhre. With that track, the second single, the band say they wanted to capture “the feeling of warm summer evenings, the scent of youth”.
Text by Marçal Bonastre