A double bass line, eloquent, elastic, not far from “So What” from Miles Davis' album of the century Kind Of Blue. Elegant. Some Jarrett drizzles from the wing. The saxophone body breathes. Then, as if of free will, the melody materializes, and “I” is in the room, the opener of the new Slowfox album. After barely half a minute the song grew together, unexpectedly and in no hurry. As if it had never been there before.
Freedom, the third album by the Cologne trio, stands for freedom and radiates it. Bandleader Sebastian Gramss calls the music of the collective “Melodic Avantgarde”, always able and willing to perforate borders in whatever direction. Just because. Or - also not. It's not loud. But uncompromising.
The name of the album goes back to an iconic sentence with which the great Nina Simone replied to an interviewer in 1968 when he asked about her definition of freedom: “I will tell you what freedom is to me: No fear. I mean really no fear. ” Detached from the syntax, the words now serve as titles for the tracks on the Slowfox album. The essence of the content remains untouched in its original artistic reference, not charged with new meaning by the band.
Slowfox have been trying to find song titles by quotation since their debut album The Woods (2014). Then it came from US poet Robert Frost. With ECHO award winner Gentle Giants (2017) it is a US proverb that is often attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Brought together in 2013 by Sebastian Gramss, the instrumental trio plays chamber music-like composition jazz in pop song format: short pieces, none longer than five minutes, which quickly get to the point with a high level of complexity.
Freedom shows a very tidy synthesis of modern sound aesthetics and our own conception of contemporary melodies with no artistic limitations. Meticulously thought out and arranged, put together and set in motion with intuition and know-how, this complex stuff is nevertheless easy to grasp.
1. I 04:13
2. WILL 04:26
3. TELL 03:29
4. YOU 03:05
5. WHAT 03:36
6. FREEDOM 03:45
7. IS 02:18
8. TO ME 04:01
9. NO FEAR ! 03:54
10. I MEAN 02:21
11. REALLY 04:03
12. NO 05:06
13. FEAR ! 03:04
14. NINA 02:54
15. SIMONE 03:58
Hayden Chisholm – Saxophone, Flute
Philip Zoubek – Piano, Prepared Piano, Moog
Sebastian Gramss – Double Bass, Spacebass*
* Spacebass – modified double bass with 12 additional sympathetic strings
Music composed by Sebastian Gramss
except Track 10 – traditional Korean song
Label: Rent A Dog
Produced by: Sebastian Gramss & Ana Lakčević
A production of Sebastian Gramss & SLOWFOX
Recorded by Christian Heck at the Loft Studios, Cologne
Recording Assistant: Lukas Lohner
Mixed and Mastered by Reinhard Kobialka - Topaz Studio, Cologne
