2025 stock In the ever-mutable landscape of Dutch jazz, Joost Buis’s Astronotes stands as a testament to the playful collision of composition and improvisation. Released on the Data label in 2004, the album finds Buis—trombonist, composer, and bandleader—at the helm of a vibrant ensemble drawn from the heart of Amsterdam’s creative music scene.

From the opening bars of “The Eggs,” it’s clear that Buis is less interested in adhering to tradition than in subverting it with wit and invention. The band’s approach is rooted in the written and the improvised, but the real magic lies in how these elements are developed and deconstructed. There’s a palpable sense of fun and vitality: horns romp through the dizzying “Spaghetti Canon,” while Jan Willem van der Ham’s alto saxophone cavorts over thick curtains of sound, and Felicity Provan’s cornet fires off bright fusillades in the background.

Elsewhere, “The Comet’s Point of View” opens a door to a spontaneous jigsaw of sound, where pulse and meter are transmuted and locked into a kind of cosmic drift. The band’s deft orchestration of Ellington-Strayhorn’s “Zweet Zurzday” nods to jazz’s grand tradition, but Buis’s arrangements are anything but reverent—Paul Pallesen’s guitar emerges as a rhapsodic voice, and the ensemble’s collective energy is always on the verge of mischief. The bluesy “Nantones” growls and slurps with dirty delight, a reminder that Buis’s sense of humour is never far from the surface.

Astronotes is a record that delights in tweaking expectations, playing fast and loose with jazz history while maintaining a coherent, swinging core. It’s deadpan, witty, and inventive—music that tickles the funny bone as much as it challenges the ear. In the hands of Buis and his Astronotes, the Dutch jazz tradition is not just alive, but gleefully mutating.