That stew offers the listener a hearty, churning cauldron of sound to taste from over the course of the band’s stunning debut, Red Kite. The album’s 40 densely layered minutes comprise four expansive original compositions by guitarist Hermansen, each offering a vast, intriguing but wide-open terrain for the band to traverse. In addition, the quartet delves into Alice Coltrane’s “Ptah, the El Daoud,” the title track from the pianist/harpist’s classic 1970 Impulse! album, honing the original’s spiritual transcendence to a keen, serrated edge. Lofthus and Hermansen met while both were members of the long-running Norwegian hard rock band Shining. The drummer was a founding member in the group’s early days as an acoustic jazz quartet; Hermansen joined a decade into the influential ensemble’s history, as it was veering further into avant-garde metal sounds on albums like Grindstone and Blackjazz. Both were familiar with Frønes’ distinctive powerhouse style from his work in the rock band Cadillac; Hermansen went on to work with him in the progressive jazz fusion quintet Grand General. When the bassist left his home base of Trondheim for the capital city, Oslo, the three were, according to Lofthus, “all just looking for an excuse to jam.” The results, he recalls, were “too much fun not to repeat at a later date.”