Just as Germany's ECM record label has been stereotyped as the home of ambient or contemporary classical jazz, Norway's indie Jazzland has a grooves'n'loops label pinned on it. That this piece of received wisdom is far wide of the target was raucously emphasised by some raw-boned, blasting acoustic-improv from Jazzland in London this week.

The bill was shared by Hakon Kornstad's sax-led trio and the powerful quintet Atomic, led by bass virtuoso Ingebrigt Haker Flaten. Here was music of purpose, shape and passion. The balance of organisation and freedom and the technical skills of the players gave both sets an exhilarating energy.

Drummer Paal Nilssen-Love was shared by both bands, and displayed a meticulous rhythmic busyness, the clear cymbal beat of the best straightahead drummers, and the spare capacity to take explosive climaxes to higher levels. He made a substantial contribution to the focus and collective empathy of both groups, but their commitment to a spontaneous ensemble music came from other sources, too: devoted research into the free-jazz tradition, and the openness of the Oslo contemporary music scene they inhabit.

Completing Kornstad's trio is the fine bassist Mats Eilertsen. The group played an absorbing set along Ornette Coleman lines: fluid runs alternated with harrying phrases and abrupt halts; leisurely sax melodies were contrasted with scurrying, double-tempo patterns from the drums. Kornstad's tonal range was wide, coupling free-jazz phrasing with a big Sonny Rollins guffaw, moving to split-note multiphonics in slower passages.

Atomic's wriggling sax-and-trumpet dances, meanwhile, echoed Coleman's dialogues with Don Cherry. The quintet played some scalding freebop as well as all-out collective squalling, with Nilssen-Love's cymbals urging on a blustery, rapid-fire bop theme from Fredrik Ljungkvist's clarinet and Magnus Broo's trumpet. It was some of the most exciting and uninhibited spontaneous music heard in London in years.