Jazzrausch Bigband: téchne

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Moritz Stahl
Jelena Kuljic
Thorben Schütt
Frederik Mademann
Thomas Kölbl
Viktoria Tolstoy
Marco Dufner
Nils Landgren
Julian Hesse
Nesrine
Jutta Keeß
Angela Avetisyan
Julius Braun
Florian Leuschner
Bettina Maier (as, ss)
Alma Naidu
Patricia Römer
Kevin Welch
Samuel Wootton
Leonhard Kuhn
Michael Salvermoser
Johannes Bär
Andreas Broge
Kalle Kalima
Wolfgang Haffner
Roman Sladek
Raphael Huber
Heinrich Wulff
Daniel Klingl
Jakob Manz
David Helbock
Georg Stirnweiß

Label:

ACT

April/2021

Media Format:

CD, LP, DL

Catalogue Number:

9923

RecordDate:

Rec. July–September 2020

After tackling Ludwig Van on 2020's Beethoven's Breakdown, Munich's ever-enterprising Jazzrausch Bigband now have a go at inventing a completely new genre – something we might call ‘jazz techno'. Whether or not this ever needed inventing in the first place is of course a matter of taste; but despite approaching this project with a good deal of trepidation, I ended up rather enjoying it. téchne is odd enough a crossover to actually work better in the ears than it does on paper.

There's a serious purpose to all this – bandleader Leonhard Kuhn says he wanted to explore the relationship between art and technology, but also bigger questions in science and philosophy. So ‘What It Is' looks at how Covid has deepened wealth inequality, and ‘AI 101' considers artificial intelligence (AI) as a compositional tool. It doesn't always work – occasionally the vocal interventions (especially Nesrine's) are rather grating – and ‘Der Literat''s attempt to marry Dada poet Hugo Ball with techno-jazz doesn't really come off, but the album is tremendous fun, sonically interesting and it swings ferociously. What we really need now is for this lockdown to end so that we can see Jazzrausch Bigband perform this stuff live in concert. I have a feeling it'll be a blast.

Follow us

Jazzwise Print

  • Latest print issues

From £5.83 / month

Subscribe

Jazzwise Digital Club

  • Latest digital issues
  • Digital archive since 1997
  • Download tracks from bonus compilation albums during the year
  • Reviews Database access

From £7.42 / month

Subscribe

Subscribe from only £5.83

Never miss an issue of the UK's biggest selling jazz magazine.

Subscribe

View the Current
Issue

Take a peek inside the latest issue of Jazzwise magazine.

Find out more