In the summer of 2019, as the venerable jazz and new music venue LOFT in Cologne prepared to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, the absence of the Steinway D-274 concert grand piano which had journeyed to Hamburg for restoration left space in the recording studio for something else of note. Since the early nineties, the LOFT studio has been host to more than a thousand recordings by European free jazz pioneers like Peter Brötzmann and Günter Baby Sommer, veteran bandleaders like Nils Wogram and Angelika Niescier, and supremely adaptable transplants like Paulo Álvares and Hayden Chisholm. With room to spare, 2ndFLOOR e.V. which serves as the promotional arm of the venue announced a recording project on behalf of young musicians, offering four prizes consisting of two full days in the studio free of charge. Part of the second intake of recipients following a fallow spell during the coronavirus pandemic, this week the Lisa Wilhelm Quartett announce their debut album Potpourri, which features Wilhelm on drums alongside Mortiz Langmaier on piano, Franz Blumenthal on bass, and Lukas Wögler on tenor saxophone.
Fresh from the release of his audio score for the Cologne-based contemporary classical Ensemble Musikfabrik, which made stark and sonorous use of the microtones and dissonances native to their recreated set of Harry Partch instruments, the producer Deathprod returns to the pit of obsolete processors and sound generators which make up the Audio Virus Lab in Oslo for an album of eerie close listening whose seventeen tracks emerge in that order in which they were made. A teacher at Carleton College and director of the composition programme at the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, whose cascading chamber pop album War Footing arrived earlier this year, the composer Andrea Mazzariello wrote ‘Hello and Maybe Goodbye’ for Eric Cha-Beach of the experimental percussive ensemble, making use of the Sensory Percussion trigger system to expand the sonic palette of mini drum kit and tuned pipes which sit at the core of this fitful and sinuous piece.
On solitary brass, from Ronchin near Lille the saxophonist, flautist, and plastic artist Sakina Abdou anchors herself in her own pattern language, comprised of her influences as well as the signifiers of home. For his first concept album, described as like the haze of hearing when half asleep, the Japanese producer Bot1500 lands on Lith Dolina, the spectral club offshoot of AD 93. The Hi-NRG honcho Furious Styles presents the third release in a series dedicated to DJ Screw, cut adrift somewhere off the coast of Florida, the enigmatic Wave Temples circumnavigate to find themselves curiously and unexpectedly on another night in Peru, as Alan Johnson the duo of Tom Neilan and Gareth Kirby unleash more bassweight pressure while seeking guidance from the poetry of the Rastafari drummer Count Ossie, and tracks by Iggy Pop, Little Simz, and Keba Robinson as Crosslegged complete the latest roundup of best new music.
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furious styles – ‘faces’ (feat. LD, Dimzy, ASAP, Monkey, and Liquez)
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Lisa Wilhelm Quartett – ‘But They Don’t Know Yet (Serenade)’
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Andrea Mazzariello & Eric Cha-Beach – ‘Hello and Maybe Goodbye’
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Sakina Abdou – ‘Goodbye Ground’
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Iggy Pop – ‘Strung Out Johnny’
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Wave Temples – ‘Double Enchantress’
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Little Simz – ‘Angel’
