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**In recent years Paradox Tilburg has been the spot to experience experimental and avant-garde music in an intimate setting on the Friday and Saturday of Roadburn. For the fifth year running, we’ve teamed up with this special, world-renowned jazz club to bring you: Ragnarök Trio (IS), 137 (UK), ZU (IT), Kameel (BE), Steamboat Zwitzerland (CH) & Heavy Jazz Jam by Ragnarök Extended Sekstet (INT),

Ragnarök TrioDutch/Icelandic behemoth Ragnarök Trio’s self-coined “doomsday jazz” plays out like a modern-day Saga. Led bij axe-slinger Thorkell Ragnar – flanked by Jesse Schilderink (tenor sax) and Jens Meijer (drums) – the music evokes a Jheronimus Bosch-painted panorama of chaos and odd characters – all embedded in some kind of apocalyptic backdrop.

The group’s full-length LP ‘Prepare To Die!’ employs a mixture of intent and improvisation – a constantly shapeshifting sound, predominantly of live takes, that spans the realms of hard rock, jazz, noise and prog. Seeing it all unfold in the flesh, in all its sprawling splendour, really is the one way to truly believe it!

137Sometimes one must allow the music to speak for itself. A pretty plausible mindset for sax/woodwind player Larry Stabbins (Working Week) when – after an extended period of sea faring – he cold called some of his fellow creme de la creme in music to form a bonkers new improv-band.

‘Bonkers’ being the operative word: joining Stabbins are Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Jim Barr, plus skinsman Seb Rochford (Sons of Kemet, Patti Smith) – all of them attuning their collective experience and proficiency to the symphony of mother nature, to become 137, a post-rock/noise jazz ensemble of the Weather Report, Dirty Three and Tortoise-variety.

The music itself – as heard on the aptly titled LP Strangeness Oscillation – is as adventurous and cacophonous as one would expect – witnessing these four hot shots primal screaming with their instruments into thrilling sonic unknowns will truly be one for the books.

“ The animal spirits of the players closer to a thrillingly undisciplined cacophony than anything borne of jazz ‘orthodoxy” – The Quietus

ZUItalian noise trio ZU sounds like the musical manifestation of some ancient Lovecraftian beast rising after a long slumber. The conjure a growling, ungodly miasma of noise rock, avant-jazz, post-metal, and electronic music that seems to have been forged inside of some kind of underworld furnace.

If you can turn the heads of the likes of John Zorn and Mike Patton, indeed, you must be doing something right. Paolo Mongardi’s tribalistic pulse, Massimo Pullino’s rumbling bass and Luca Mai’s hellish sax skronk will rattle spirit and bone long after their combined might has been unleashed into the room.

“After a quarter-century as a band and over a dozen albums, Zu have acquired a natural, almost spiritual intensity” – The Quietus