| Yes, this is organic music, with the low frequencies of two basses forging the ground (and that explains the name of this band, Grund) of everything happening musically, two saxophones (doubling on clarinets) on top, and everywhere the presence of Christian Lillinger, a pupil of Gunter “Baby” Sommer who plays the drum kit thinking composicionally. In three tracks, also a very special guest on piano, Joachim Kuhn. With this unconventional formation, Lillinger goes from one extreme to another: he combines rhythm and melody with no harmony in between, and he melts all instruments in a blurred mix of sounds, going totally harmonic and abstract. “First Reason” is the most advanced jazz played nowadays in Germany and in Europe, and knowing the list of collaborators of this drummer is to clarify the importance he achieved in the scene: Urs Leimgruber, Rudi Mahall, Mederic Collignon, Frank Gratkowski, Axel Dörner, Daniel Erdmann, Gebhard Ullmann, John Schröder, Simon Nabatov and Ernst Ludwig Petrowski are some of them, musicians of several generations and orientations. He's involved in collectives like Hyperactive Kid, Spoom, Wanja Slavin Sextett, Gschlößls Vierergruppe and Joachim Kühn Berlin Trio important cells of the 21st century jazz in the Old Continent. Slavin is one of the reedmen here, and the basic quintet also includes a growing star of the tenor, Tobias Delius. His partnerships are similarly astonishing: Steve Lacy, Louis Moholo, Bill Frisell, Misha Mengelberg, Jeb Bishop, Kent Kessler, Hamid Drake, Ray Anderson, and Han Bennink are among the improvisers who called him to play together. And then you have Kuhn, the first name everybody pronounces when the subject of the conversation is the European pianistic mastery in this kind of music. Simply remarkable. |