Chants by TAU

It's a bit of a problem with bands that have top-class members. Everyone's schedule is always full, bursting with a thousand other projects, so it almost takes an AI assistant to organize production times or gigs for everyone. The Cologne and Berlin-Neukölln-based jazz formation TAU (which was still called TAU5 when their debut album "Kreise" was released in November 2020 consists of Moritz Baumgärtner (Drums), Philipp Gropper (Sax), Philip Zoubek (Keys), Ludwig Wandinger and Felix Henkelhausen (bass), who has since joined the band, replacing Petter Eldh.
It's no wonder that it took over four years to complete their second album "Chants". It's another double album and again the compositions only became, what is now pressed on vinyl and CD, during the editing process. A music of constant transformation that would still not be finished if there were no deadlines for such things. It would probably be the optimal strategy for this quintet if they could upload new versions of their pieces to the internet seasonally. Because the discrepancy between what is practiced in the present and a theoretically possible is, as is well known, immense and constantly changing. This also applies to music, especially jazz, in which the once progressive currents, have long since become bourgeois oases of well-being. It's no wonder that Chants not only sounds futuristic, but also quite dark and dystopian over the long stretches: the perfect score to be included in a film in which dark forces rob you of your last ounce of energy. Strong gravitational fields that, if necessary, use militant force to put you back in your place.
Yet the music wants to float, wants to breathe, wants to show complex connections, draw new maps, and open the doors for possibility. It is both Neue Musik and Ambient. A combination of Jazz fusion and Science Fiction. Aphex Twin or Laurie Spiegel are just as much of an inspiration as Stockhausen, Cecil Taylor, or John Coltrane. ZEN-BIENT could be a suitably tailored made-up term for it. Although the Jazz community might feel quickly excluded. In reality, Jazz has long been a term that excludes more people than it includes. Although TAU remains a Jazz quintet that you can connect to in purely conventional terms, they are also interested in the artistic neighborhood of today. This is evident both on the record cover by Markus S. Fiedler and in the first video work by Grischa Lichtenberger for the song "Dune". It was certainly no coincidence that the mastering of the album was commissioned for Rashad Becker (formerly Dubplates & Mastering) in Berlin.
In this way, Chants expresses the heartfelt desire of a band to continue its constant artistic development and to take us along on its journey. Of course, none of this is directed against jazz, but rather wholeheartedly in favor of it!

outernational music for interplanetary people

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