dark jazz
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If you followed our tweets during the latest Incubate festival, you might have noticed the one mentioning 'Here come the goosebumps'. When I sent that one, I was watching this German quartet and I suddenly realised why I am a frequent visitor of this amazing festival. It's discoveries like this one that make it all worthwhile. I actually almost missed them, until my wife pointed them out when she was reading the description in the festival guide.
Radare has been around since 2011. According to what I read about the band, they started out as a post-hardcore doom band and gradually evolved into what is now a brilliant dark jazz band. If you are into Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, Dale Cooper Quartet, Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble or the mystical works of Angelo Badalamenti, there's no way of missing out on 'Im Argen'. With this record, Radare set themselves right in the middle of that company and show no intention of being a lesser quality band.
In fact, and I'm going boldly honest on this one, Radare has currently surpassed Dale Cooper and are right on their way to pushing Bohren off the pedestal in my dark jazz collection. Why? Well, simply put: because of the amount of variation while strongly holding on to these elaborate gloomy compositions. Besides regular instruments like guitars, bass and drums (which they use in free-form mode), there's Rhodes pianos, klarinet and trombone. And because there's only four members, they need to vary those instruments, resulting in something very organic and ever-evolving.
The bass player also plays trombone, the drummer also plays klarinet and the guitar players also play that awesome Rhones piano or keyboards respectively. That can't be easy on stage but I witnessed it and these guys pull it off with great ease, or so it seems. On 'Im Argen', they do it even better and they're blessed with a great production, resulting in a perfect sound. The sound is dark, often nudging towards doom metal, in a setting of a smoke filled nightclub in a David Lynch movie.
But there's more to this music than dark jazz. On some occasions, like in the mesmerizing closer 'Distress' they show a little bit of their post-rock and even noise history. This song continuously changes intensity and sound, making it a perfect apotheosis for this fantastic album. I know I didn't mention the other songs, but that's because I mostly love the overal flow of the album. Since Incubate, Im Argen has been frequently playing, both on vinyl and mp3 and I'm absolutely positive it will float through my speakers a lot of times from now on. You might find this one quite high on my best-of-2015 list, that's for sure...
Serge
Radare has been around since 2011. According to what I read about the band, they started out as a post-hardcore doom band and gradually evolved into what is now a brilliant dark jazz band. If you are into Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, Dale Cooper Quartet, Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble or the mystical works of Angelo Badalamenti, there's no way of missing out on 'Im Argen'. With this record, Radare set themselves right in the middle of that company and show no intention of being a lesser quality band.
In fact, and I'm going boldly honest on this one, Radare has currently surpassed Dale Cooper and are right on their way to pushing Bohren off the pedestal in my dark jazz collection. Why? Well, simply put: because of the amount of variation while strongly holding on to these elaborate gloomy compositions. Besides regular instruments like guitars, bass and drums (which they use in free-form mode), there's Rhodes pianos, klarinet and trombone. And because there's only four members, they need to vary those instruments, resulting in something very organic and ever-evolving.
The bass player also plays trombone, the drummer also plays klarinet and the guitar players also play that awesome Rhones piano or keyboards respectively. That can't be easy on stage but I witnessed it and these guys pull it off with great ease, or so it seems. On 'Im Argen', they do it even better and they're blessed with a great production, resulting in a perfect sound. The sound is dark, often nudging towards doom metal, in a setting of a smoke filled nightclub in a David Lynch movie.
But there's more to this music than dark jazz. On some occasions, like in the mesmerizing closer 'Distress' they show a little bit of their post-rock and even noise history. This song continuously changes intensity and sound, making it a perfect apotheosis for this fantastic album. I know I didn't mention the other songs, but that's because I mostly love the overal flow of the album. Since Incubate, Im Argen has been frequently playing, both on vinyl and mp3 and I'm absolutely positive it will float through my speakers a lot of times from now on. You might find this one quite high on my best-of-2015 list, that's for sure...
Serge
