«From the center to Berlin»
Since the Berlin Wall fell, the new German metropolis has developed into a hot spot of the European jazz scene. It's cheerfully chaotic there, and stylistic borders are a lot fuzzier than in other places. People do not only play along with each other, but also interact indiscriminately. Welcome to the "Melting Pot Berlin".
Berlin is a kind of creative continuous-flow heater – and indeed for various generations. The ex-avant-gardists Alexander von Schlippenbach and Ulrich Gumpert demonstrate that musical explosiveness also exists in post-avant-gardist times. Bands such as Der Rote Bereich and Die Enttäuschung mix anarchy and complexity. And there are very many young, undiscovered musicians, who blossom in this ambience and develop exciting ideas. Listening attentively is really worth the effort at times.
«In the labyrinth»
An extremely exciting, young Berlin band is the sextet Transit Room, which was founded by the Swiss bassist Andreas Waelti. The band members are from various countries (Germany, France, Norway and Switzerland), several of whom also compose. Team spirit plays a not to be underestimated role in Transit Room, so that you don't have to suffer endless solo digressions as a listener (musicians are working here, who have understood that the era of heroic 20-minute solos has ended), but instead can savor the enhancing effect of individual skills thanks to the great variety of conceptual standards.
Jazz tradition is not treated like a fetish here, but instead creates the foundation for a labyrinthine, entwined Transit Room, which leads from the clarity of classicism to the wild deconstructivism of the post-modern.Transit Room beats out a path from the erotic nonsense of Strayhorn ballads (incl. sexy sax vibrators) to the action-abstraction of Eric Dolphy's «Out to Lunch» (incl. buzzing vibraphone textures). It makes certain that the music does not sound like an echo of distant times, but instead like a modern-day, urgent scream (HURRAY!!! or TEKELI-LI!!!). Musical components are not simply pasted together cleverly, but instead put into relationships in such a way that they stimulate each other and generate a kind of meta-music in intermediate spaces of vibration. (Text by Tom Gsteiger)
Pierre Borel - alto sax
Daniel Glatzel - tenor sax & bassclarinet
Samuel Halscheidt - guitar
Karl Ivar Refseth - vibes
Andreas Waelti - bass & toys
Tobias Backhaus - drums & toys
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Edgar Allen Poe only wrote one single novel, and this music might appear to many to be as puzzling as it and its main character "Gordon Pym" – however, only to those people who wear acoustic blinders and whose most important pieces of furniture are pigeonholes. The founder of Transit Room, the Swiss bassist Andreas Waelti, is also the bassist in the band, which has creating excitement in the best sense of the word for about one year: the "Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra" – its "head" there, Daniel Glatzel, also provides his service to the sextet here. His varied, expressive playing is heard to especially good advantage in the small group, and his partner on alto saxophone, the Frenchman Pierre Borel, is just as good. Above all, the Norwegian Karl Ivar Refseth – also a member of Andromeda – contributes important sonic ingredients with his pending vibraphone sound as well as the guitarist Samuel Halscheidt, who knows precisely how you create ambience with sounds. Connoisseurs of the "Next Generation" series know Tobias Backhaus as drummer in Andi Kissenbeck's Club Boogaloo, and he demonstrates his enormous range of talent in creating rhythmic artworks here.
They all have the fact in common that they can create special worlds of sound in Transit Room, which initially rattle our listening habits, but to which we can no longer (and no longer want to) return to afterward. Or as Tom Gsteiger wrote (in the Swiss "Bund"): "That which makes Transit Room into a band whose lively music you can hardly hear enough of, is not primarily the solo flights of fancy, but instead the heightening of individual skills thanks to the variety of compositional and conceptual guidelines."
Berlin has become a melting pot of European top musicians in the meantime for the complete scene, and the force of innovation is cooking on a high flame there. Transit Room presents the icing on the cake.
