Horse Orchestra: The Milkman Cometh
Jeppe Zeeberg

Jeppe Zeeberg: The Full Experience
Jeppe Zeeberg

Making sure the world has its fair share of humour and high spirits must be one of Jeppe Zeeberg's (b. 1988) major goals. The pianist is but one member of Horse Orchestra, the pan-Nordic ensemble founded a decade ago and featuring musicians from Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; however, his madcap sensibility is a central part of the band's persona, even if it's not displayed quite as much on The Milkman Cometh as it is on his solo outing The Full Experience. He brings an untamed, Dada-esque spirit to his projects, and were he to name Marcel Duchamp as his primary inspiration, it wouldn't in the least surprise. That anarchic spirit infuses his keyboard playing also, as evidenced by his roller-coaster solos on both albums.

It's a sensibility shared by his Horse Orchestra bandmates, judging from the wild times hinted at in the photos on the sleeve of the group's third album. Playing piano, electric piano, and organ, Zeeberg's joined by Erik Kimestad (trumpet, flügelhorn), Ingimar Andersen (saxophone, clarinet, flute), Petter Hängsel (trombone, marching baritone, French horn), Kristian Tangvik (tuba), and Nicolai Kaas Claesson (basses), and Rune Lohse (drums) on the vinyl set. Yet as much as the band has an appetite for good times and chaos, it can get serious when the business of music-making's involved.

Of the eight performances on the release, half were recorded live and the rest in-studio, the latter a tad more polished. In the tell-us-how-you-really-feel-about it department, there's Zeeberg's “Fucking Dishonest Shit Politicians,” a fabulous studio throwdown that overlays a dynamic funk groove with equally funky horn phrases. After strafing that performance with wild splashes of piano, Zeeberg does something similar in the live rendering of Hängsel's bluesy “Mr. One,” with a tenor-wielding Andersen contributing as blistering a turn. On “Xenon - Sector 1,” Hängsel offers a spirited take on music written by David Whittaker for the 1988 video game Xenon, the performance's stomp as rooted in rock and disco as jazz. In addition, an inspired cover of Gershwin's “I Got Rhythm” shows Horse Orchestra's got the chops to deliver high-energy jazz when it feels like it, and the rollicking “Montag ist vielleicht der lustigste Tag” likewise shows Zeeberg's capable of writing straight-faced material—its warped, mid-song interlude aside.

A record I often return to is 1984's I Hate to Sing by The Carla Bley Band, its hilarious first side in particular (though the second's good too). Organist Arturo O'Farrill elevates “Very Very Simple” with a hilarious vocal but even better is the gut-busting singing by the late drummer D. Sharpe on the title track. Interestingly, moments arise on The Milkman Cometh that recall the sound of Bley's band. In between the excruciatingly long pauses separating horn phrases during the opening of “Behold Time,” audience members can be heard laughing at the band's audacity, and the blustery trombone solo Hängsel contributes to it and Claesson's rousing, gospel-tinged “BCC” isn't all that different from the kind Gary Valente regularly gave to Bley's outfit. That Zeeberg and Horse Orchestra are carrying on that tradition in their own bent fashion is great to see.

However much The Milkman Cometh flirts with unconventionality, The Full Experience goes it one better. How cheeky is the Danish keyboardist? He gave his 2019 album the title Universal Disappointment and calls his main group Jeppe Zeeberg and the Absolute Pinnacle of Human Achievement. That outfit, a quartet with Henrik Olsson (guitar), Casper Nyvang Rask (bass), and Søren Høi (drums) makes two raucous appearances on the new album, while other tracks feature configurations of various sizes and re-appearances by Kimestad, Hängsel, Tangvik, and Lohse. Alongside woodwind players, bassists, and drummers, Zeeberg's credited with—deep breath—piano, pipe organ, pump organ, electric organ, mellotron, synth, vibraphone, guitar, drums, and vocals.

His cheekiest move, however, is to have fashioned the album as a meta-styled guide for how best to experience it, with an automated voice appearing throughout to provide direction and critique. “Interlude #1,” for example, states, “The music is at least two things: one, a documentation of the musicians playing; two, the scene it's depicting”; the later “Mutter Prelude” includes the damning line, “The more you think you know, the smaller your ears become.”The essential message is that any attempt to reduce the listening experience by way of category or association diminishes it (which means, of course, that this commentary qualifies as reductive too).

After the first of many such lessons, “Cloth'd In Robes of Blood and Gold” presents an expansive big band-styled statement reminiscent of The Milkman Cometh and culminating in a celebratory “Hey Jude”-styled outro. Shifting gears dramatically, “We're Gonna Party Like it's Anton Webern's Birthday” could pass for a Todd Rundgren-meets-Sonic Youth collaboration, with the punchy strutter enlivened by squawking saxophone soloing and interjected by a jagged post-punk guitar episode and a field recording of placid bird chirping. Elsewhere, there's a swoon-inducing salon number (“For Eternal Use Only”), a twanging pop-punk instrumental riff on an Anthony Holborne theme, and a wheezing, Kurt Weill-styled piece replete with banjo (“Puritanical Pleasures”). Brace yourself for the moment in “Artistically Yes, Commercially No” when Olsson unleashes a scream to further inflame the track's punk-funk throb. Far easier on the ears, “Signature” caps the album with a sonorous horn chorale performed by two trumpets, trombone, and tuba.

Admittedly, it would be interesting to hear what a full ‘serious' album by Zeeberg would be like. After all, with the experience he's garnered and the formal training he's received (he earned his Master's in music from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen in 2013), he could produce such a project if he chose to (one enticing scenario would be a double-album set, with one-half given to a sober presentation and the other to his wackier side). Regardless, the number of musical provocateurs like Zeeberg is modest, so hopefully he'll keep following his instincts and letting his muse speak. It would be a shame to see such a free spirit contained.

November 2021