Nils Wogram & Root 70 – Cd-release: The Pristine Sound Of Root 70 | Day 2 at Loft

tickets:
regular: 14,- €uro
students, disabled persons: 7,- €uro

doors: 8.00 pm CET
concert starts:
approx. 8.30 pm CET


Sounds like this:
https://youtu.be/TpGjaGaaRH8



„Old-fashioned“ is a delightfully old-fashioned word that actually exists in almost every language. „Old fashioned“ or „démodé“ – while this term had a dusty connotation just a few years ago, today it expresses the opposite of „old-fashioned“, namely a self-determined resistance to ever faster incoming new trends and technological developments that determine our lives, but at the same time disconnect from them, because you always have to have the next new thing in mind. „The Pristine Sound Of Root 70“, the new album by Nils Wogram’s band Root 70 is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word in a very lively, refreshing and authentic way. Because it makes us pause, reflect, take a breath and slow down. From the first note, it gives us something familiar that only wants to be rediscovered and adapted. If references from the past are anything to go by, the album sounds like a date between the Gerry Mulligan Bob Brookmeyer Quartet and the Albert Mangelsdorff Quartet of the late 1960s. Trombonist Nils Wogram, saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Jochen Rueckert manage to open entirely new doors and windows for our time with the combative composure of those years....

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tickets:
regular: 14,- €uro
students, disabled persons: 7,- €uro

doors: 8.00 pm CET
concert starts:
approx. 8.30 pm CET


Sounds like this:
https://youtu.be/TpGjaGaaRH8



„Old-fashioned“ is a delightfully old-fashioned word that actually exists in almost every language. „Old fashioned“ or „démodé“ – while this term had a dusty connotation just a few years ago, today it expresses the opposite of „old-fashioned“, namely a self-determined resistance to ever faster incoming new trends and technological developments that determine our lives, but at the same time disconnect from them, because you always have to have the next new thing in mind. „The Pristine Sound Of Root 70“, the new album by Nils Wogram’s band Root 70 is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word in a very lively, refreshing and authentic way. Because it makes us pause, reflect, take a breath and slow down. From the first note, it gives us something familiar that only wants to be rediscovered and adapted. If references from the past are anything to go by, the album sounds like a date between the Gerry Mulligan Bob Brookmeyer Quartet and the Albert Mangelsdorff Quartet of the late 1960s. Trombonist Nils Wogram, saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Jochen Rueckert manage to open entirely new doors and windows for our time with the combative composure of those years.

„The point was for me to do something timeless,“ Wogram records. „I definitely have an affinity for old-fashioned. The challenge is that it’s not stale. I wanted to completely break away from a certain zeitgeist or guided concept. As a band ages and also ages, it becomes more and more difficult to find something new on a permanent basis with the possibilities of a certain instrumentation and personnel composition. The framework is given. But you can celebrate and celebrate the specifics and nuances that are present.“

Root 70 has reached a point as a band where it has presented every conceivable version of itself. It no longer needs new musical programs. Now the Four 1 can just let loose and tell it unselfconsciously. Wogram deliberately wanted to create material with a narrative structure that would conceptually confine the musicians involved as little as possible. He relies on clear forms and simple textures. The character of the tracks arises from their mood, within which the individual and collective narratives then unfold. With Chisholm, Penman and Rueckert, Wogram can draw on the human and playful resources to fill this demand. After his 50th birthday, he himself has found a calmness that used to elude him.

In addition to said composure, the high recognizability of the songs is a common thread running through the album. This is perhaps less due to the melodies than to the narrative attitude with which the band lives through each song. Each song has a plot, and this plot is recognizable, even if not easily retellable, because it can only be told by Root 70. In terms of sound, „The Pristine Sound Of Root 70“ is the most beautiful album the band has ever recorded. Wogram has always been a sound fetishist, but here he outdoes himself in this regard. You literally feel pressed into a plush old movie theater seat by the soft sound of these songs, literally waiting for the curtain to open. The visual quality of the music is immensely enhanced by this passionate persistence in sound. This is how the band seems to want to tell their listeners: We’re telling you a story you all know, but we know you’ll want to hear it again and again. Because that’s exactly what we want to hear, too.

„It’s a very classic format,“ Wogram describes this attitude. „A jazz band plays together in a room. It’s pieces whose themes are introduced before then improvising on them. With this clearly comprehensible form, nothing is painted over. I’ve been involved for years with the discourse of where the new currents of jazz are going in the first place. Sometimes I have the feeling that in the pursuit of novelty, the nuances of individual statements fade too much into the background. We didn’t want to subordinate our own narrative structure to the concept anymore.“

The risk Wogram takes with this postulate he simultaneously sees as an opportunity. He specifically relies on the moment of reliable repetition, on which not only stories but also trust can be built. The challenge for him is to find legitimacy for this classic format without betraying his own aspirations built up over decades. None of what is heard on „The Pristine Sound Of Root 70“ is content with copying something that already exists, but exclusively before the biographical backgrounds of the four musicians and the band as a whole. Root 70 remains true to itself in that the group once again breaks with expectations. Within its own scope of action, the band is definitely looking for something new.

Last not least, „The Pristine Sound Of Root 70“ is a child of this time, because due to the involuntary break of the worldwide lockdown, Wogram, Chisholm, Penman and Rueckert have been thrown back on themselves. Freed from the incessant touring routine, they had leisure individually and collectively to put all their values to the test. Suddenly, personal memory once again becomes a driving force in the musical creation process. Root 70 are not afraid of the infamous Guilty Pleasures and honestly allow what happens in and with them.

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