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Enders' jazzy commentary on the world situation

2020-05-18T06:11:22.944Z


Sometimes acoustically, sometimes electrically: The Weilheim jazz star Johannes Enders likes to change worlds. The new album of his project "Enders Room" now indulges both worlds - and connects them perfectly. It comprises two panels. One leads to the "Electric Room", one to the "Acoustic Room".


Sometimes acoustically, sometimes electrically: The Weilheim jazz star Johannes Enders likes to change worlds. The new album of his project "Enders Room" now indulges both worlds - and connects them perfectly. It comprises two panels. One leads to the "Electric Room", one to the "Acoustic Room".

Weilheim - The “Enders Room” exists real, in the basement of a semi-detached house in the middle of Weilheim. He is the musician's retreat and experimental space in his family's home: a sound laboratory in which Johannes Enders tinkers with his sound universe to his heart's content and without any time pressure - sometimes with friends, but mostly and often also alone.

But of course the "Enders Room" is not just a Weilheim basement room. 18 years ago he became the title and program of the project that is most of all what one could call "pure enders" if the term were not so trite. Everything flows here that animates and inspires this jazz giant, who celebrated his 53rd birthday on May 12th. And there comes a lot together with a musician who has worked with such diverse, inspiring artists as Hank Jones, "The Notwist", Rebekka Bakken or Nana Mouskouri; who commutes between family life in Weilheim, jazz professorship in Leipzig and appearances worldwide; who loves the bubbling of New York as much as the peace of the Ammer.

Pounding beats and waving hypnotic sounds

Undoubtedly: The five albums that have been released under the name “Enders Room” since 2002 have a special status among the three dozen records that the saxophonist and composer have filled with their own pieces to this day. In the “Enders Room”, he tinkers with electronic music, lets programmed beats pound and hypnotic sounds wobble, generously expanding the usual jazz aesthetic. While jazz usually thrives on exchange, Enders usually fiddled for himself.

However, that has changed over the years. “Enders Room” is now - also - a fixed band, an acoustic line-up that perfectly integrates electronic sounds. There are old and new companions in the room. The boss enthuses that he found “a dream cast” there: with the Norwegian “Notwist” vibraphonist Karl Ivar Refseth, with Bastian Stein, who is currently “Germany's most exciting trumpeter”, and with three grooving exceptional Swiss jazz musicians : Pianist Jean-Paul Brodbeck, bassist Wolfgang Zwiauer and drummer Gregor Hilbe, who also shines as an "electronics engineer".

Whether single-handed or in a band structure: “Enders Room” moves stylishly at the interface of the real and virtual world, sometimes pulsating, sometimes relaxed - and with so much creative and playfulness that a record length would not have been enough, the current state of affairs play. Part one of the double album is called "Dear World" and takes place in the "Electric Room": Here is much electronic and almost everything Enders. This part of the name was basically produced by itself, the band musicians (to which the old Weilheim friend Micha Acher joined the trumpet and sousaphone) only play guest roles.

Escape to a cocoon of self-reference

The “Acoustic Room”, however, in which part two of the work takes place, is a matter for the collective. The band takes motifs, continues them, dissolves synthetic in analogue. “Hikikomori” was the title of Enders in this second part - this is how people in Japan are referred to who withdraw to their homes and reduce contact with the outside world to a minimum. On the one hand "Dear World", so obviously a message to the world; on the other hand "Hikikomori", so escape into a cocoon of self-reference: could there be a more up-to-date, more relevant title for a work of art in 2020?

"Enders Room," said Johannes Enders in a recent interview about the new album, "is always a bit of a parable in our day, when artificial intelligence is contrasted with humanity" - and there is reason to fear that artificial intelligence could eventually gain the upper hand. "I somehow found the idea funny," Enders continued, "that the electronics dissolve in the end and people still win."

The album

“Dear World / Hikikomori” from “Enders Room” has been released on Yellowbird / Enja on CD and vinyl. It is available in Weilheim in the bookstores “Lesbar” and “Zauberberg” as well as directly from Johannes Enders via info@enders-room.de.

Read more about the Weilheim cultural scene here.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2020-05-18

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