Jacob Young, Mathias Eick, Vidar Johansen, Mats Eilertsen, Jon Christensen

Sideways is the second ECM album by the Norwegian guitarist Jacob Young, released in November 2007. It keeps the quintet of his label debut Evening Falls (2004), a band that brings together three generations of Norwegian jazz. Young writes for it songs with, in his words, "a lot of room for melodic interplay and improvisation", and this time his acoustic guitar comes much more to the fore.

Young was born in Lillehammer in 1970 and was introduced to jazz by his American father. He studied in Oslo and then at the New School in New York, where his main teacher was Jim Hall. His band joins the younger trumpeter Mathias Eick and bassist Mats Eilertsen with two Oslo veterans, Vidar Johansen on bass clarinet and tenor saxophone and Jon Christensen on drums. The album was recorded in May 2006 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo with engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

All ten pieces are Young's. The title track opens on acoustic guitar, with mallets on the cymbals, trumpet, bass clarinet and bass gathering slowly around it. In Hanna's Lament the two horns float over Eilertsen's bass before Young solos on classical guitar. Out of Night, the longest piece at over ten minutes, gives Johansen's tenor room to stretch. Young turns to electric guitar on a few tracks, among them Time Rebel and Slow Bo-Bo. The album ends with Gazing at Stars, a short epilogue for overdubbed guitars.

Reviewers in Britain singled out the rhythm section. Duncan Heining of Jazzwise wrote that "Christensen is perfect in this setting and in certain ways defines this record", and heard a slow, stately, impressionistic pace. In Jazz Journal, Michael Tucker praised how Eick and Eilertsen dovetail with the two veterans, calling it a candidate for record of the year. In the American JazzTimes, A.D. Amorosi heard the core in the exchanges between Young and Eick: "They play upon each other's heartstrings."

This is the CD edition, ECM 1997, first released on 2 November 2007, in a jewel case with a 16-page booklet and an outer O-card.