Holler My Dear - Steady As She Goes (TRAUMTON RECORDS 2018)

The first song of the new album already makes clear where Holler My Dear’s musical journey is heading to this time. Steady As She Goes signalizes confidence, courage and movement. The international band from Berlin knows: when the shadows in the world grow longer lamenting doesn’t help, but optimistic determination does. Accordingly, the music sounds like a soundtrack for a confident departure, for courageously swimming against the tide. Of course there are also pensive moments and quiet ballads.

But overall, the pleasure of cheerfully dancing out of line prevails, inspired by music that sounds uplifting and elevating. Wonderful melodic arcs, catchy hooks, triumphant choirs and infecting grooves are topped off by Laura Winkler’s captivating vocals, changing between soul, pop, and jazz. They convey good-humored resistance, dispel sadness with subtle wit and exude a lightness that never turns into carelessness. This is inextricably linked to clever song lyrics, which clothe reflections about the way of the world in direct, cunning or poetic words.

Holler My Dear’s second album Eat, Drink & Be Merry three years ago was already celebrated for its unusual, largely acoustic sound, in which trumpet, accordion and mandolin step out of their traditions to create something new. Laura Winkler’s enormously versatile singing and her optimistically worded thoughtfulness left an even longer lasting impression. “Every piece unstoppably heads for a hymnal climax and in its fervent core shines Winkler’s masterful vocal art,” Rondo wrote. The magazine Folker praised that “progressive music can also be made without electronic effects,” and Andreas Fellner from Ö1 diagnosed the “music as an anti-depressant”.

Others highlight the “artful pop attitude” (Mica - Music Austria) or the boundlessness of the music. The internationality of the sound lies in the genes of the sextet. Laura Winkler, born 1988 in Graz, studied voice and composition in the conservatory there, and moved to Berlin in September 2011. Several years earlier, the drummer Elena Shams and accordionist Valentin Butt came to the German capital from Russia, independently from one another. Lucas Dietrich originally comes from Vorarlberg and lived in Paris for three years, trumpeter Stephen Molchanski previously played in London with a hip-hop band and with the Alternative Dubstep Orchestra. Fabian Koppri from Brandenburg had the shortest way to Berlin. The band came together in the winter of 2011/12.

Recently they added another Briton, the singer/songwriter Ben Barritt, who joins the band for live shows from time to time and was now also featured in the production of the new album. All personalities bring their own distinct musical backgrounds. Molchanski’s trumpet sounds like New Orleans jazz or Vaudeville drunkenness, in addition he raps skillfully ironically. The accordion awakes memories of Balkan or French musette, even though Butt’s playing is so well versed and multifaceted, that he has already worked for the Berlin Philharmonics and various theatres.

Elena Shams drums disco beats with audible enjoyment and reveals her passion for detailed, playful patterns. As a self-declared Steely Dan fan, Barritt is an expert for second voice harmonies and focused entries, such as striking funk or other guitar riffs. As the center of force and gravity, Laura Winkler’s splendid singing floats above everything. As lively as ever and in certain colors even more confident, her spectrum ranges from slightly dreamy, atmospheric moments to gospel-like expressiveness. In between there are rhythmic phrasing, rapidly spoken lines and jubilant boosts. Her irresistible enthusiasm always conjures a smile on the audience’s faces. Laura Winkler is the main composer and songwriter of the band; her subtle humor protects even profound passages from too much melancholy.

On Steady As She Goes Winkler has become more straightforward than before, also musically, but especially in the lyrics. Nonetheless, the songs are still full of detail. “I love it, when an album works like a movie, novel or journey and you just can’t stop and always want to listen on. Therefore I already gave thought to how the individual pieces go together harmonically and in what order they should be on the CD while composing them. It was also my aim to structure the songs airier, because the band will make them more dense later anyway.” Some facets, like stylistic elements and metaphors, appear multiple times over the course of the album. “We created certain sounds for terms like ‘water’ or ‘storm’,” Winkler explains, “furthermore, there are recurring themes in the lyrics.”

First and foremost, there is her stated plea for candor, pluralism and humanity, as well as explicit rejection of exclusion, fear mongering and absolute calculation. Laura Winkler also displays diversity in a personal manner in “Little By Little”, where she openly sings about queer topics. And Winkler poetically addresses absurdities of today’s electronic communication in “Orchid Song”. “We want to speak to our audience and tell them how we see things and what really gets to us,” Winkler says. Many international concert tours in the past years have brought the band even closer together. Experiences like in Mexico City, “where several thousand spectators were hopping around at our show,” were impressions that influenced the new songs, just like the ones in Iran and Kazakhstan, Japan, Korea, or Estonia. “In Teheran we were always approached; the people absolutely wanted to exchange views.”

The band is all the more excited about their first Malaysia tour in the beginning of December, where they are also performing at the Penang Island Jazz Festival. Under the impact of tour experiences, Holler My Dear are playing with dynamics even more purposefully and sprinkle some contemporary electronic vignettes in between their distinctive acoustic sounds. When Holler My Dear think of disco, they primarily mean those classics like Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” from a time when disco still had a societal relevance aside from glamor and hedonism, and conveyed a solidary attitude towards life.

“The idea, to animate people even more strongly to dance, does not mean giving up the filigree aspects of our music,” Laura Winkler emphasizes. There is a clear message inherent in the album’s title Steady As She Goes: “Keeping the ship on course” does not necessarily mean straight stability, but rather cutting one’s way, possibly swaying and shaky, through high waves. “One has to be flexible, because the only thing consistent is change. In doing so, we think of ‘Don’t Panic’ from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy,” Laura Winkler grins. “Changes are part of our life and we stay in motion.” It is precisely this attitude that makes Holler My Dear’s Steady As She Goes a very special pop record, on which lightness and depth, passion and grandeur are soaring.

1. Steady As She Goes 02:49

2. Forward 04:00

3. Home Away from Home 04:39

4. Seeds of Concord 04:10

5. Dream Sequence 03:13

6. Little by Little 04:01

7. Nemories 05:19

8. The Deep 01:13

9. Orchid Song, Pt. 1 03:24

10. Orchid Song, Pt. 2 01:45

11. Steady As She Goes (The More the Merrier) 05:01

12. Scintillating Lady 05:04

13. Wrong Thing’s Some 00:37

14. Something’s Wrong 05:12

15. Zwischen den Städten 05:59

16. Afterword 06:08

www.hollermydear.com

Other Animal - Other Animal (TRAUMTON RECORDS 2018)

A new formation with old friends, a particular sound with familiar vignettes: Other Animal plays “alternative prog-jazz”. The newest project of Bernhard and Peter Meyer, who take the key roles as composers and producers in this quartet, unites players from Berlin and New York who harmonize perfectly together and inspire each other. The Meyer brothers are best known for their highly acclaimed Melt Trio. With their distinct music and sophisticated stylistics on semi-acoustic bass and electric guitar, they have been contributing to the Berlin-specific jazz sound for years.

Beside the already beaten paths of the genre, they fuse elements of improvised and new music, independent-rock and ambient sounds and show how jazz can sound in the present and the future. “Also on their third album, the Melt Trio again plays in a league of its own,” Jazzpodium summarizes and places Peter Meyer among the international ranks of the generation Marc Ribot, Jacob Bro and Marc Ducret.

The magazine Rondo labels the trio as “one of the most stunning of the current jazz scene.” As a trio they have always enthralled listeners with their CDs and countless concerts and in addition, they explored other constellations - sometimes together, sometimes separately. For instance with the Norwegian electronica artist and live-remixer Jan Bang, the drum charismatics John Hollenbeck and Nasheet Waits, the exceptional singer Theo Bleckmann and the Portuguese double-bass original Carlos Bica. The Meyer brothers had also worked with Jim Black in the past.

Born in 1967 in Seattle, Black studied at Berklee College, then moved to New York and ever since, has been enhancing many projects with his distinctive playing. On the one hand in his own formations, such as the post-rock jazz quartet AlasNoAxis with Chris Speed, the Balkan-oriented Band Pachora, as well as Human Feel, with Speed, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Andrew D’Angelo. Furthermore, Black recorded a handful of albums alongside Dave Douglas and Uri Caine, also for the BBC with Tim Berne and Nels Cline, with Dave Liebman, Steve Coleman, Laurie Anderson and many more. During the same time as these sessions with Jim Black, the Meyers had initiated collaboration with Wanja Slavin.

The saxophonist, born 1982 in Freiburg and based in Berlin since 2005, received a Jazz-Echo award in 2014 for the album Starlight, which he recorded with Petter Eldh and Christian Lillinger. Most recently Slavin attracted attention in the quartet Amok Amor (Eldh, Lillinger, Peter Evans), for instance at the Moers Festival 2016, London Jazz Festival and Jazzdor Straßburg. Moreover, he has played with Kenny Wheeler, Médéric Collignon, John Schröder, Joachim Kühn, Alexander von Schlippenbach and others.

It was only a matter of time, until these award-winning individualists would unite to form a quartet. In November 2016 the band went to the legendary Funkhaus-Studio in the east of Berlin. The takes were so successful that thoughts about cutting and editing never came up. Merely a few overdubs were added, like guitar layers and electronic effects from Peter Meyer and flute and synthesizer from Wanja Slavin, to give the sound more depth here and there. With only one exception, Bernhard and Peter Meyer wrote all pieces on Other Animal specifically for this quartet.

“We wanted to give the musicians something where they could fully unfold their magic. Jim masters an enormous variety of grooves, so of course we also worked with that.” Consequentially the tempos of the pieces are very diverse and reach from almost Nordic seeming calmness all the way to crescendos with metropolitan verve. Black’s intuitive, free and yet very pointed playing with dynamic and forceful entrances also exhibits a pronounced sense for sound, which again harmonizes perfectly with the Meyer brothers’ sound awareness, their arcs of suspense and their energy made up of both transparent-airy and powerful dense passages. Wanja Slavin brings a sometimes fragile, sometimes rough beauty into the band. Inspired by the revolutionary expressiveness of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, Slavin can captivate with sensitive as well as forcefully gripping sounds; some facets of his playing are reminiscent of new music and electronic music.

Thanks to Slavin, Peter Meyer’s role in this quartet is a little different than usual. “With the Melt Trio I’m always the soloist, kind of like the singer of the band. In Other Animal I can concentrate on creating specific tonal colors from time to time. Just like guitarist Meyer, Slavin evidently also thinks in structures and textures. Both focus on atmospheric, sharply detailed soundscapes instead of the traditional “faster, higher, further”-competition. Thus they interlock like zippers’ teeth - not only in parallel passages. Or they seem like a tree, whose shoots sprout into different directions.

A constant quality of Other Animal, is the compositional modernity of both Meyers, which is guided by their own listening habits. The two early thirtysomethings are not only influenced by the sound of certain jazz greats like Bill Frisell, Keith Jarrett (especially the quartets with Haden, Motian, Redman or Garbarek), Marc Ribot and Terje Rypdal, but also by rock experimenters like Radiohead, James Blake and the Notwist. Exemplarily they mention their piece Nongeniality; a melody that could come from Charlie Parker, but is turned and twisted through the indie-rock filter. To the Meyer brothers the form of the songs is at least as important, as melodic themes and solos.

By that, they mean the sequence of parts, arcs of suspense and instrumentation. In these aspects McCoy Tyner and Brad Mehldau are just as much inspirational sources as Weather Report and Grizzly Bear. Above all else is the band’s motto formulating what is best for the music: playing consciously and intuitively, leaving out the irrelevant and standing above vanity and self-display.

The title Other Animal represents the unknown and the new, Bernhard and Peter Meyer explain. A band is an organism, which breathes and pulsates. It needs to communicate and be kept alive to amaze with different motions, timbres and developments again and again. In this sense, Other Animal is a very special, charismatic species.

1. Drown Dreams 03:43

2. Name of Cold Country 05:38

3. Mr Manga 02:49

4. Stroy 05:03

5. Downbear 04:47

6. Nongeniality 03:11

7. Cloudline 04:13

8. E Dance 06:03

9. No Fruit 04:14

10. Spectral 05:55

11. Qubits 04:15

12. Blim 05:24

Peter Meyer - guitar

Wanja Slavin - sax

Bernhard Meyer - bass

Jim Black - drums

Bernhard Meyer - Murmuration (TRAUMTON RECORDS 2018)

“I have had this formation in mind for some time now,” Bernhard Meyer says about his quintet, which unites an unusual combination of instruments and charismatic musicians. “The specific sound came together over time in my imagination,” Meyer continues, “inspired by collaboration with these musicians individually, in smaller formations.” Of course the ingenious unity with his brother Peter is present again, well known through three highly acclaimed albums and countless concerts of the Melt Trio. Moreover, Bernhard Meyer’s particular, melodiously rich playing of his semi-acoustic bass has impressed listeners in co-operations with Norway’s live-remixer and electronica-grandmaster Jan Bang (with the Melt Trio), John Hollenbeck, Jim Black, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Nasheet Waits, Eric Schaefer and many more.

Besides the Melt Trio, the Meyer brothers have been exploring similarities with another outstanding drummer of the German scene for a while now, namely Andi Haberl. The Bavarian Berliner-by-choice made a name for himself with distinctive appearances with the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra and has been fascinating audiences with Europe’s most progressive indie-rock band The Notwist for years. In addition, Bernhard Meyer played several concerts in a chamber musical jazz trio with the clarinet virtuoso and electronic tinkerer Claudio Puntin and Julius Heise, who shone as a fine jazz vibraphonist, with the Brand Brauer Frick Ensemble among others.

Some time ago Bernhard Meyer united the different personalities into a new quintet. On Murmuration the stylists now reach tremendous depth and wonderful richness of detail. At times their playing is extremely filigree, like a ballerina they perform surprising twists on tiptoes. At the same time there is a force inherent in their interaction, which blazes the way dynamically and can boost and intensify contrasts. The expression spans from acoustic nuances all the way to contemporary electronica vignettes and futuristic facets.

Bernhard Meyer’s individual bass playing goes far beyond just setting the basis and carries melodies and rhythms. On top of that, the internal allocation of responsibilities shifts. Sometimes Peter Meyer and Julius Heise create harmonic chords and transparent sound layers, then the guitarist changes to join Claudio Puntin, to merge melodies and electronic sounds. Just a little later the Meyer brothers and Andi Haberl act as a rhythm section, trenchantly pressing the groove forward. Bernhard Meyer’s compositions and arrangements unroll a wide panorama. It is so rich in variety that you always want to keep going, curious to find out what happens beyond the next bend.

Melodies and themes flash up, fade again into the background and come back unexpectedly from a different direction. Every piece has its own character. “Plain Air” is reminiscent of Steve Reich’s pathbreaking minimalism, “Unchild” conveys almost sacral atmosphere, “Wooden” captivates with its open and in a broader sense free approach. At times one deems to perceive distant allusions to John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet, Bill Frisell, colorfully shimmering arrangements of Sufjan Stevens or Kurt Rosenwinkel’s Heartcore.

A scale by Olivier Messiaen provides the basis for a three-part unison in “Corus”. New perspectives surprise again and again, even within certain tracks Meyer skillfully plays with alleged contrasts. Like in “Growl”, where weightless, warm sounding vibraphone and cool monolithic synthesizers encounter each other get along remarkably well. In “Plain Air” the Classical minimalism makes way after a while for a passage, in which the spirit of Charles Mingus comes alive; then towards the end the piece comes closer to the indie progressive rockers Grizzly Bear. Throughout the album, grooves interchange with odd meters and freely devised rhythms.

Some ingenuity might remain concealed to the listener, which doesn’t disrupt the enjoyment though, nor does it bother Bernhard Meyer. He sees the conceptual deliberations for his pieces primarily as a toolbox for producing new ideas. As an example for details with deeper background, he mentions his bass improvisation on “Aphir”, which isn’t performed as a traditional solo, but is abstracted in a live-remix by Peter Meyer and Claudio Puntin.

Bernhard Meyer has meticulously polished many aspects of his compositions. As head of the quintet, most impulses and ideas do indeed come from him - at the same it is important to him, that his partners have room to bring in their personal talents. Thus drummer Andi Haberl and the Classically trained and New Music versed Julius Heise can also exhibit their sense for orchestration. A master of this discipline is Claudio Puntin, when he’s not playing as a soloist.

Born 1965 in the Central Swiss town Zug, the multiply award-winning clarinetist wrote music, besides for his own productions, also for film, theatre, audio dramas, and exhibitions. His list of collaboration partners is long and stretches from Steve Reich, Carla Bley, Fred Frith, Hermeto Pascoal and Sidsel Endresen to the Ensemble Modern and the Philharmonic Orchestras of Cologne, Munich and Zurich. Most recently Puntin worked in the Trio Ambiq with producers and DJs Max Loderbauer and Ricardo Villalobos, to create bridges between free improvisation and electronic music.

Clever and smart ideas run through Murmuration like a golden thread and the intuitive playing attitude of the band makes the album lively. A dazzling band sound is the motivation and objective for Bernhard Meyer. Innovation and form are the important parameters thereby. The album title references the spectacular flights of starlings, where the complex interconnectedness and densification fascinates all people and still poses riddles to science.

“I’ve had the pictures of these swarms in mind for quite some time, as a synonym for a band that can fluently and unpredictably vary delicate structures and textures,” Bernhard Meyer says. His band may not reach the volume of a swarm in numbers, but their diversity of sound surpasses the expectations a quintet usually generates. Meyer’s Murmuration mesmerizes the listener just like the swarms of starlings its observers.

1. Just Like John 08:19

2. Radiance 05:38

3. Dark Flow 06:50

4. Growl 07:09

5. Aphir 03:36

6. Plain Air 06:18

7. Unchild 05:20

8. Wooden 05:50

9. Corus 06:14

10. Shields 05:23

Bernhard Meyer Website

Slowfox - Gentle Giants (TRAUMTON RECORDS 2017)

From all the unconventional projects Sebastian Gramss has initiated, Slowfox is the most melodic. Essentially that is true; nonetheless, also this assessment should be seen in relation. Of course ECHO-award-winners Gramss, Hayden Chrisholm und Philip Zoubek are much too reflective to stray onto the thin ice of entertainment. “We invite the listener by connecting to something familiar,” Sebastian Gramss describes the starting point from which the trio develops chamber-musical aesthetics of sharpened senses. Gentle Giants comes alive through a subtle profoundness, in which there is a lot to discover: harmonic finesse, elegant sound ideas, and fine imaginative powers.

Bandleader Gramss, who also functioned as the producer of the record, calls the music “Melodic Avant-garde”. Different from the subversive avant-garde of earlier decades, Slowfox only changes a few specific rather than all established parameters. The open approach of the trio brings together crafty structures and improvisations and appeals to intellect and heart alike. Instead of bold speed or muscle flexing there are atmospheric nuances and slender sounds, which interlock in transparent arrangements.

At the first listening the omission of any percussion already becomes apparent. Certainly Slowfox is not unique in this aspect, although the concept still seems quite uncommon in a jazz-context. Of course Slowfox can also swing without a specific beat, however, other qualities are the focus here. Unlike the debut album released in 2014, all compositions on Gentle Giants are written by Gramss specially for this formation. “On the first record we explored the possibilities of the new formation and therefore I resorted partly to tried and trusted material,” Gramss recollects. “Thereafter the band sound was generally clear.” Subsequently the trio played live a lot and carved out its contours more and more clearly. It was essential to this new work, to carry on the individual path. It took about a year to find fitting pieces and to formulate them, Gramss says. In the summer of 2016 there was an extensive tour, so Slowfox had the chance to bring many of the pieces from Gentle Giants to life on stage before they went to the studio in mid-September.

Born 1966 in Wilhelmshaven, Sebastian Gramss began playing guitar and electric-bass, which later led him to the double bass and it was Louis Armstrong, Progressive-Rock and Weather Report that brought him to jazz. In the past decades he has worked with sound-rebels like Fred Frith and Elliot Sharp, as well as free jazz pioneer Peter Brötzmann and has written music for Pina Bausch and Hans Kresnik. Gramss’ most unusual project is probably the orchestra consisting of 50 bassists named Bassmasse [Bass mass]. Gramss already played with Hayden Chrisholm before Slowfox; back in 1996 they were already sharing a rehearsal room. The saxophonist with the clear tone came to Cologne through a DAAD-scholarship and in the mean time also studied in Japan and in India. On his solo debut Circe he amazed with a self-devised microtonal system and since then Chrisholm played with Root70, David Sylvian and others. Furthermore, he created music for films and installations of Rebecca Horn. In 2013 he was awarded the SWR-Jazz-Prize. Philip Zoubek studied in Vienna and from there resettled to Cologne in 2001. For over 10 years the unconventional pianist has been in contact with Gramss and also played with Louis Sclavis, Rudi Mahall, Simon Nabatov, Clayton Thomas and many more. His trademark is extensive preparation of the grand piano with aluminum pots, glasses and plastic toys, which decisively expand on Cage’s basic idea.

Just like for their debut album, Slowfox has found a poetic guiding motif for Gentle Giants as well, and its words were interspersed throughout the titles in the track listing. Since the order of the compositions on the album obviously follows a tonal dramaturgy, some of them now randomly carry peculiar names like “Were”, “To Be” or “The”. The entire quote - “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music“ - is accredited to Friedrich Nietzsche, Gramss says, but it is uncertain if it really originated with the philosopher. What is for sure though, is that the clarity and deeper meaning of the sentence Slowfox very well. The trio’s nuanced music can make the mind dance and its listeners will definitely not be declared insane.

1. And Those 4:16

2. Who Were 4:16

3. Seen Dancing 6:28

4. Were 2:08

5. Thought 4:18

6. To Be 4:00

7. Insane 4:03

8. By 2:29

9. Those 3:17

10. Who 2:00

11. Could 3:48

12. Not 3:29

13. Hear 3:39

14. The 3:10

15. Music 3:29

Sebastian Gramss double bass

Hayden Chisholm saxophone

Philip Zoubek  piano

Niels Klein Tubes and Wires - Life in Times of the Big Crunch (TRAUMTON RECORDS 2017)

Niels Klein has been challenging conventional genre boundaries for years. His interest in music and sound is much too widely spread, for him to limit himself. Born in Hamburg in 1978 and based in Cologne since studying there, Klein has made a name for himself as a composer and leader of various formations; among them also large ensembles, like the Metropole Orkest, the European Jazz Orchestra or even the EOS Chamber Orchestra. Through this work at the latest, Klein got into the habit of looking beyond the usual horizons.

While Niels Klein has been awarded many prizes for his ingenious compositions and his expressive, colorful playing (ECHO 2015 as saxophonist, WDR Jazz Prize Composition, European Composer Award from the city of Berlin), his quartet Tubes & Wires is going in a slightly different direction than his other projects. Here especially the tension between naturally and electronically created sounds, the encounter of wood and electricity, is explored in a very individual way. The approach of the four experienced jazzers reveals their background, but at the same time displays their knowledge of the quality of clear lines and transparent structures. Of course the quartet can interact spontaneously, especially since the variable pulse is coming from ECHO-award-winner Jonas Burgwinkel and not from a circuit board. Just listen to the piece “Grid”, with its rhythmic finesse. In the music of Tubes & Wires, solos and sounds are equally predominant, the latter often being developed in interplay. That is why Klein doesn’t play any saxophone here but rather concentrates on different clarinets in many different and also some unusual pitch ranges. “Clarinets have a very clear linear sound, which in my opinion is much more suitable for electronic manipulations than any saxophone, “ Klein explains. Even when he multiplies his sound electronically, the synthetic doublet seems very similar to the original.

When Niels Klein composes for Tubes & Wires, he thinks of the participating musicians, of the world of science fiction and of alternative rock. The fact that some “fiddly jazz” still comes out in between - like in “Moonbender”, which exhibits some expressive solos - just adds to the appeal of this unconventional project.

With the second album of Tubes & Wires, Niels Klein once again demonstrates his sense for extraordinary concepts. The dazzling fusion of woodwinds and electronics, the mix of atmospheric, elaborate band sound and gripping improvisations amounts to self-willed and likewise entertaining Sci-Fi-Jazz.

1. Launch Pad Disco

2. Wornout Livelong Machine

3. Backward Happiness

4. Grid

5. Moonbender

6. Perpetual Waves

7. Beams

8. Camarudo

9. Gleam

10.Life In Times Of The Big Crunch

 

Niels Klein: clarinet, alto-bass-contralto clarinets, effects 

Lars Duppler: Fender Rhodes, Moog Prodigy and Roland Juno synthesizers 

Hanno Busch: guitars, bass 

Jonas Burgwinkel: drums