Mads la Cour’s Almugi - Hule (WHY PLAY JAZZ 2018)

Fascinating melodies are spiritually bound together as Almugi skirts the well-traveled highways on its way to forging new paths. An emotive music from the European North amazes with its sophisticated originality, as it creates an earthy, natural musical atmosphere.

Played by a band with an uncanny feel for one another, the music on Mads la Cours’ fourth album, “Almugi” revels in a subtle intimacy. This Danish musician’s compositions point the direction towards a uniquely well-rounded music, balanced, truthful, and played with a deliberate intensity.

Despite the dangers and ever-increasing problems in the world, the goal is to find the beauty that surrounds us, to acknowledge and never lose sight of that beauty. The musicians all stem from the Danish island of Fünen; they are all in their late 30’s, and busy with various musical projects, yet since 2015 they have made this band their focal point. There is something grating and ruff-edged; the horns splinter the tones, compress and assimilate the sounds in such a way that an earthy, natural musical atmosphere is created and maintained. Nothing is smoothed over or pre-packaged.

Mads la Cour is searching for that which is good and true. He is concerned about the human indifference and the lack of altruism around us. It angers him when the wrong people gain control of the levers of power. His composition "Støjland Møgland" alludes to Inger Støjberg, the Danish Minister for Immigration, Integration, and Housing. “Terminus” refers to a jazz club in France that offers ideal working conditions. “Gammelton” is a hymn to his parents. The title piece, “Hule”, concerns itself with a cave used as refuge, a safe haven against stress and anxiety, a place in which one would want to sign up to stay. However, the art on this album is bound to earthy nature, face to face with the world’s wounds and wonders.

There is a transparent texture and elasticity to the music. Fascinating melodies are spiritually bound together. The album skirts the well-traveled highways as it forges new paths. “Almugi” is the ancient Scandinavian word that signifies “free men of the Kingdom who possess the quality of goodness” – a fitting word for the players and music on this album.

Concerts 2018

Jul 12, 2018 - Kopenhagen, DK @ Kvarterhuset, Copenhagen Jazz Festival

Sep 03, 2018 - Kopenhagen, DK @ 5E

Sep 05, 2018 - Århus, DK @ Sun Ship

Sep 06, 2018 - Svendborg, DK @ Giant Steps

Sep 08, 2018 - Stockholm, SE @ Glen Miller

Immer Schön #1  4:36

Terminus  5:41

Støjland Møgland  6:24

Hule  5:53

Immer Schön #2  4:31

Gammelton  4:33

Impro  0:52

Bølgebop, Bølgebop  3:18

Immer Schön #3  3:07

Mads la Cour (cornet, flugelhorn)

Lars Greve (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone)

Kasper Tom Christiansen (drums)

Mariusz Praśniewski (double bass)

Recorded 1st & 2nd of May 2017 by Chris Weeda at Fattoria Musica Studios, Osnabrück, Germany Mixed by Chris Weeda

Mastered Peter Hellesøe

All compositions by Mads la Cour

Produced by Mads la Cour for WhyPlayJazz

Design and artwork by Travassos

Cover art: Woodcut by Per Kirkeby, © Donation Jorn, Silkeborg / Per Kirkeby

With support from Svendborg Musikråd, DJBFA, Dansk Artist Forbund and Dansk Skuespillerforbund

FUSK - The Jig Is Up (WHY PLAY JAZZ 2018)

FUSK is 100% contemporary jazz, catapulted forward by the creative ingenuity of the band members; these are players who have something to say! The music is intensive, joyous. It grabs you, as it expands out of its musical roots and takes off and into the open air.

Kasper Tom Christiansen is no purist; instead, he tastefully mixes genres, as much at home with the techniques required in contemporary new music as with the improvisational surprises of free jazz.

FUSK takes up a wide field of play, and this adventurous quartet doesn’t like to be fenced in. It all begins with the members of a band that has been in existence for some ten years. “The Jig Is Up” is FUSK’s fourth album. Trumpet (now with a new band member, the amazing Polish musician, Tomasz Dabrowski), bass clarinet/clarinet (Rudi Mahall), bass (Andreas Lang), and drums: It’s a band that reminds you of such breakthrough bands of the early 1960’s as the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet, the New York Art Quartet, or Archie Shepp’s early quartet with trumpeter Bill Dixon. At first listen they sound a bit retro, indicative of the revolutionary fervor of the time. But straightaway you sense there’s something deeper here, something playful, with an understated humor that transports history into the present.

Despite their complexity, the compositions are far from obtrusive. FUSK evinces an amazing lightness in their play – there’s an edge to the tempos and a synergy between the two horns. That may sound like blue light (high speed) driving, like a club in which you’d love to spend the evening, like big city street scenes, like an enchanted past with imprints in the here and now. It is intensive, joyous music with a melodic incisiveness. It grabs you. Expanding out of its musical roots, it takes off into the open air, as it constructs and deconstructs the musical material in the same breath.

This acoustic band has fun with the album’s feel of freewheeling swing. There’s often a tongue-in-cheek attitude to the music’s mercurial, gripping shifts and turns. It’s fresh music that plays around with the sounds we are used to hearing, as the musicians tip their hats to the past while at the same time blasting through traditional styles.

There’s a balance within the turbulence that oscillates between the compositions and the continual leaps of creative furor. Nothing takes a life of its own here, since everything is dedicated to the service of the musical situation. And there’s the band’s whimsical name, FUSK, which could be translated as “messing around”. With the band’s ironic musical allusions and subtle humor, the name fits. Yet, the irony never degenerates into cheap tricks; there is never a lack of creative ideas.

Concerts 2018

Jun 30, 2018 - Svendborg, DK @ Jazzfestival

Oct 28, 2018 - Pohrsdorf, DE @ Saxstall

Nov 01, 2018 - Stuttgart, DE @ Theaterhaus Stuttgart, IG Jazzfestival

Nov 03, 2018 - Lokeren, BE @ Lokerse Jazzklub

Circles  5:07

The Jig Is Up  6:54

Happy New Year  5:47

Blacklisted  3:53

Pennies  6:17

Politics  5:21

I Play Tennis And Blues  4:00

Song for Otto  5:59

Dyrk Dild  4:11

Minervois  7:27

Kasper Tom Christiansen (dr, comp)

Tomasz Dąbrowski (tp)

Andreas Lang (b)

Rudi Mahall (bcl)

Recorded, mixed and mastered October 2017 by Tito Knapp at Tito’s Zentrifuge, Berlin, Germany

All compositions by Kasper Tom Christiansen

Produced by Kasper Tom Christiansen for WhyPlayJazz

Design by Travassos

Photo by Kristoffer Juel

With support from Svendborg Musikråd, DJBFA and Koda’s Cultural Funds