Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Ronny Graupe / Laura Schuler / Alfred Vogel - Kwestia (BOOMSLANG RECORDS May 18, 2018)


KWESTIA is a band which invites you the listener to witness it´s progress. Due to different domestic places (an austrian alpine village named Bezau, the swiss city of Bern and Germany´s Berlin - let´s call it the golden triangle of Bs ...) the band meets in bigger intervals to record and tour and let you be part of how things are moving on ... therefore we choose bandcamp as a plattform where new tracks will be added as soon as they are available. 

Ronny Graupe´s work as a guitar player and writer is well recorded and demonstrates the fresh attitude of improvisers of the European Jazz Scene. His collaboration with bands like Hyper Active Kid (now Gropper / Graupe / Lillinger), Yellow Bird or Grand Seniors like Rolf Kühn a.m.o. proof him as a highly skilled virtuoso as well as a great composer of modern music.

Laura Schuler a former student of Graupe from the Bern Jazz School is a sensitive and highly creative string player and matches here with a wonderful light- and brightness between the dense and complex rhythms. Besides active solowork and bigger newmusic ensembles Schuler made herself a name also due to her collaboration with Graupe in a Band named Aberratio Ictus. She covers both worlds - the classic and jazz - with ease.

On drums the initiator of this project Alfred Vogel shows again his ability to drive crazy and hard as well as to fit in with sensitive brush work when the music longs for.

The compositions (for now mainly by Graupe) show an incredible matured songwriting and advanced structure. Despite of it´s complexity this music and by the way bassless trio sounds surprisingly poetic, dreamy and lightfeathered. Multiple timelayers and pulses delivered by all of the three are topped with deep sense of melody and harmony. If there is a category that might fit the concept it would be creative improvised music. And then there is a track like Latarnik with a quite poppy head.

But be aware it would change and progress ... to where?

In the modern music market artists might have more questions than ever. One question is, where their music can go to and how it will be received in a fastforward moving time ... therefor the given name is the polish word KWESTIA - which stands for the word QUESTION.

In their own words: "We don´t know where this project will lead us to. All we know is that it is wonderful music and that we played our hearts out on the recording session. We want to share it now with an interested audience and listener and hope to go out and play live ...!"

1. Ronny Graupe, Laura Schuler, Alfred Vogel - Drei 03:32
2. Ronny Graupe, Laura Schuler, Alfred Vogel - Zwei 06:47
3. Latarnik 09:15
4. Offday 02:23
5. Zwischen 06:11

Ronny Graupe (guitar)
Laura Schuler (violine)
Alfred Vogel (drums)