The "Young Folks" Guy Made a Jazz Album
I don't know enough about jazz to pretend at a dinner party. But I will.
Fair warning: some of these descriptions might sound like complaints. They’re not. Go listen and see if you agree.
I get emailed pitches inconsistently. Spirits brands, kitchen gadgets, wildlife preserves, podcast guests. Never music to review.
A PR email showed up about a Swedish jazz album featuring Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream, and I didn’t delete it. I don’t know why. I’m not a jazz critic. But something about this one stuck, and I kept pulling the thread until I’d built an entirely new section of this publication just to have somewhere to put it.
Welcome to Off-Menu. The section for stuff that doesn’t fit but won’t get thrown away.
Who Is This Guy?
Björn Yttling is the Björn in Peter Bjorn and John. You know their song even if you don’t know their name. “Young Folks.” The one with the whistling. Six hundred million streams. Gossip Girl. FIFA 08. Every coffee shop in 2007.
Before the whistle heard round the world, Yttling was a trained jazz musician. Private lessons with Swedish jazz legend Esbjörn Svensson. Top EU conservatory. He released a jazz album in 2005 called Oh Lord Why Can’t I Keep My Big Mouth Shut.
Then Peter Bjorn and John exploded. He spent twenty years producing pop records for Lykke Li, Franz Ferdinand, Robyn, The Hives, and Primal Scream. The jazz thing got shelved.
Until now. Illegal Hit dropped September 2025 and got a Swedish Grammy nomination. Illegal Hit (Out of Bounds), a three-disc expanded version with vocal collaborations, drops March 27, 2026. Bobby Gillespie singing over Swedish jazz is the headline. The instrumental album underneath is the actual discovery.
Listen Along
The Instrumentals: A Soundtrack Without a Film
Yttling didn’t make a jazz album. He made a soundtrack for eleven different movies that don’t exist.
I kept a running list. The films living inside nine instrumental tracks:
Spaghetti Western (Morricone, obviously)
Roger Moore-era Bond
Pink Panther
Ocean’s Eleven
David Lynch (something unsettling underneath the smooth)
The Mandalorian
The Mask (Jim Carrey version, not the weird comic)
Old Hollywood musical (choreographed but silent)
Fairy tale music box
Encanto (”Surface Pressure” energy)
Tarantino end credits
A lot of tonal real estate for one album.
Things That Caught My Ear
Sodon the Mountain Man opens discordant. Piano doing something wrong on purpose. Then it settles into a Pink Panther slink, sly and mischievous. The horns come in and at one point they die off like a strangled goose into a balloon exhaling all its air. Then a saxophone shows up and just starts showing off.
It holds. All of it.
“He keeps you leaning forward and then cuts to black.”
Illegal Hit (the title track) is straight heist montage from Ocean’s Eleven. As it transitions from one instrument to the next, it’s almost written for the camera to hand off from one character to another. He’s writing edit cuts into the arrangement.
And then he ends it before the job goes down. You’re left in the van, waiting for the signal.
City in Darkness (the instrumental) is a death march to a firing squad. Odd that another track was a hangman’s noose. Two executions on one album. Different methods, same weight.
But there’s something romantic or reluctant to it all. At 2:20, a horn shows up out of nowhere. Where the fuck did that come from? Somehow it lands.
The track ends without deciding if it was a death or not. Rifles raised, blindfold on, breath held. Cut.
Tanto in the Night has operatic vibes over what sounds like a super low frequency kazoo(I know it’s not a kazoo but the vibration frequency and thinness of the modulation reminds me of that). Opera floating over a kazoo in the basement. He’s putting the absurd underneath the grand and making it work.
This is the album closer, and he gives you a proper pièce de résistance finish. Big ending. Curtain call.
Then the last ten seconds are almost silent.
He can’t help himself. Even when he’s resolving, he has to leave a little space.
The Pattern
Yttling leaves quieting noise at the end of these tracks. He likes the exhale. He’s not cutting to black. He’s letting the scene fade.
And he keeps putting something slightly wrong in the mix. The discordant piano. The strangled goose horns. The woodblock that doesn’t belong. He’s testing the seams. How wrong can something feel before it breaks?
Twenty years of pop production teaches you that. He knows exactly how much tension an audience can take before they check out.
“He knows the rules. So when he breaks them, it’s a choice.”
The Vocal Remakes
The third disc collects vocal versions of the instrumentals. Different artists, same beds. Hand someone a complete piece of music and see what world they build on top of it.
Joshua Idehen took the title track and gave it vibes. Spoken word riding the groove. At one point there’s a hard edge that feels like it’s pushing toward an EDM drop, then he pulls you right back into the groove. Tension without release. The groove is the payoff.
The Tallest Man on Earth sounds almost strained trying to break into the song. It creates urgency. He’s patiently waiting in line to enter a chaotic mix. By the end, his voice echoes into distance. Maybe he got stranded on the other side of the room from where he wanted to be.
El Perro del Mar takes “City in Darkness” and transforms the firing squad into a dreary walk on a rainy day. Stripped down to voice, piano, and ethereal noise. A dark lullaby. The death got taken out. Now it’s just melancholy. Far-away rusty hinges swinging.
Matt Sweeney replaced the original texture entirely with guitar pickups doing gnarly work. Give me a 2x12 Fender amp, a vintage electric guitar with rich pickups, and a bit of intentional distortion. Just hanging out listening to a dude jam. He has comfort with the song but isn’t afraid to do what he wants. All fun playing.
Same beds. Different rooms.
Bobby Gillespie: The Headline Act
Before I could evaluate what Gillespie does on “Strange,” I had to figure out who the hell Bobby Gillespie is.
Quick homework: lead singer of Primal Scream. Drummed for The Jesus and Mary Chain in the 80s. Primal Scream has refused to stay in one lane for forty years. Acid house. Gospel. Southern rock. Cure-style moodiness. They have a song that sounds like a laser tag arena.
The guy is a chameleon. When he lands on a Swedish jazz track, it’s not a stunt. It’s just Tuesday.
Yttling produced two Primal Scream albums. These two have history.
What “Strange” Does
First impression: the opening sounds like a 70s Clint Eastwood western. Man in the desert on a horse. Sun-parched. Then it moves into Roger Moore-era Bond.
Gillespie’s voice fits into a psychedelic 60s thing, floating across the top of all the changes. Think Moody Blues but softer. The track shifts underneath him, western to Bond, sparse to driving, but he stays in his lane. He’s the thread while the scenery changes.
“The guy who can stomp chose to whisper.”
The percussion drives hard in the last third, but Gillespie doesn’t match the energy. He keeps floating while the ground shakes.
And then he’s gone. The voice disappears for the last thirty seconds and the song resolves itself.
He was a visitor. He floated through, the arrangement carried him, then he stepped out and let the instruments close it down.
The instrumentals were complete before any vocalist showed up. The singers are guests in Yttling’s house. They get their moment. Then the house settles back into itself.
The Verdict (Sort Of)
I’m not qualified to tell you if this is good jazz. I lack the vocabulary, credibilty and/or authority. But I can tell you this:
It rewards attention. It conjures scenes without needing a film. It leaves space for you to bring your own associations.
If you want jazz that sounds like jazz, this might frustrate you. If you want something that feels like a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist, with guests drifting through the frame, this is worth your time.
“He’s not making jazz for jazz rooms. He’s making jazz for the movie in your head.”
Gillespie’s “Strange” is the headline. The instrumental album underneath is the real discovery. And the whole expanded Out of Bounds package is a document of what happens when you hand the same raw material to different artists and let them build.
Kind of like handing someone a base spirit and seeing what cocktail they make.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t delete the email.
Illegal Hit (Out of Bounds) drops March 27, 2026 on YEAR0001. “Strange” featuring Bobby Gillespie is out March 24.
If you listened along, I want to know: which track landed for you? Drop a comment or hit reply.
This is the first Off-Menu piece. If you want more of these, stuff that doesn’t fit my lane but I can’t stop thinking about, let me know.