Valonia by C.A.R.

For their new studio album, the Cologne-Berlin band envisions a picturesque piece of land in the mountains and by the sea, surrounded by dense forests and vast steppes, ancient ruins and futuristic eco-cities, perfect for skiing, surfing, and playing golf.

In Valonia, only full board can be booked, including cocktails, coffee, and snacks. To guarantee this all-inclusive service, the four musicians have expanded their personnel competently and consistently: The Greek Berliner Evi Filippou brought her entire vibraphone, marimbaphone, and percussion arsenal to the studio and can be heard on all tracks of the album. The Belarusian Cologne resident Oxana Omelchuk appears here and there with her theremins and EMS synthesizers, which are probably older than all band members combined, and in the last piece "Playground," Istanbul native Elif Dikeç makes a cameo appearance, singing in Turkish about gardens and spirits before disappearing like one herself.

After their last freely improvisational album *Gästeliste* (2023), *Valonia* features original compositions again, for the first time with contributions from all four band members. Pianist Christian Lorenzen created the title piece with its spherically proliferating sound clouds that ultimately flow into a waltz-like piano ostinato with increasingly layered melodic textures. Bassist Kenn Hartwig's "Yacouba" has a similarly two-part structure, with marimba-driven grooves over which long melodic threads unfold, until the journey suddenly and acutely ends in swampy effect-heavy worlds and suddenly becomes very delicate and tender. Tender is also the ballad "Rupf" by saxophonist Leonhard Huhn, where each step is carefully placed from note to chord to sound and back again.

Drummer Johannes Klingebiel's compositions provide the framework for all of this. He ventures into some new territory here, for example writing several pieces without drums, such as the aforementioned "Playground" with its Steve Reich-esque polyrhythmic mallet patterns, the retro-sci-fi-like "Clouds," or the chamber music pop ballad "Lullaby." But there's drums too, of course, for example on "Debo-See" or "Nebel," both featuring C.A.R.'s trademark combination of synth arpeggios and motorik beats, but with some new tricks and tweaks.

The entire album was recorded under the direction of Marian Hafenstein at Berlin's Jazzanova Studios. Two veterans of the C.A.R. cosmos handled the mixing and mastering: Ingo Krauss from Berlin's Candy Bomber Studio and Thomas Ölscher from Railroad Tracks Studio in North Rhine-Westphalia.

"fao fans of kraut-jazz, this is good." - James Holden

„The psychedelic Four of C.A.R., who combine repetition and wobbling.“ - Ulrich Stock, Die Zeit

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