Label: Clean Feed, 2020

Personnel - John Hollenbeck: drums, percussion, prepared piano; Bernhard Meyer: electric bass, effects.

On their first collaborative duo album, NY drummer John Hollenbeck and Berlin bassist Bernhard Meyer create their own experimental signature with a combination of unbound rock and ambient electronic sounds. Investigations of both industrial and minimal music, and a considerable amount of chilled, low-pressure beats are also found in Grids.

Inspired by landscapes around the world, the album starts and finishes in atmospheric suspension with “Black Rock Desert” and “Vya”, respectively. The innate mystery of the former has its origins in the chromatic bass moves that populate the textural paths conducted by Hollenbeck's iridescent brushwork. Siding with it in tonal quality, the latter piece takes the shape of a tone poem bathed in melancholic dark hues. Also ambient-oriented, “Kozhim, Naroda and Balbanyu” depicts the Russian rivers with a minimalistic, downtempo approach. Yet, you’ll find sweeping rattling sounds and patterned bass noodles spotted with harmonics.

If “Xina Bena Jordao” alludes to the folk Amazonian culture of Brazil by mixing its rhythms with trip-hop vibes and presenting bass chants dubbed with murmuring overlaps for texture, then “Peace-Athabasca” paints the Canadian Delta referred in the title with an interesting combination of indie rock and electronic music. Meyer’s aesthetic bass work brings some dissonance and echo to a composition stirred by Hollenbeck’s rhythmic transfigurations.

On “105, Sangkat Boeing Profit, Khan 7”, the duo focuses on a specific Cambodian scenery, incorporating screeches, slams, clanks and microsounds in the insistent mechanical routines that Hollenbeck’s prepared piano is in charge of. The rigidness of this industrial procedure becomes variable in frequency, and soothing bass lines and effects carried off by Meyer consent in giving the piece a serenely composed conclusion.

“Uluru-Kata Djuta” is a sonic reconnaissance of the Northern Australian park, a protected area characterized by peculiar rock formations. Tinged with attractive sound effects, this number is plotted with a more tangible substance.

Grids will reward more the experimental music follower than the typical jazz listener.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Black Rock Desert ► 02 - Peace-Athabasca ► 06 - Xina Bena Jordao

Label: Traumton Records

Personnel - Peter Meyer: guitar; Wanja Slavin: saxophone, synth, flute; Bernhard Meyer: bass; Jim Black: drums.

Other Animal is a quartet led by the German brothers Peter and Bernhard Meyer, guitarist and bassist, respectively, who take all the credit for the twelve compositions on the band's debut album. They are joined by the Berlin-based saxophonist Wanja Slavin and the American drummer Jim Black, a pivotal figure in the New York jazz scene.

The animated beat that introduces “Drown Dreams”, an oblique, dreamy, chamber pop song, doesn’t dissemble some solemnity attached to its melody and harmonic conduction. There are a few grey clouds encircling it, but shining sunrays make the liberation possible. Exclusively on this tune, Slavin plays synth and flutes.

The sluggish drum chops of “Name of Cold Country”, sparse yet well coordinated with the bass lines, go along with the melodious saxophone and soaring electronic effects. The lightness of this architecture of sound gains further depth with Peter’s beautiful harmonics and warmly distorted chords. Yes, it may feel ponderous and wintry, but comes stuffed with emotion.

“Mr. Manga” and “Qubits” share vibrant pulses characteristic of the alternative rock genre. The former shifts tempo with resilience and autonomy, unraveling into interesting experimental passages, while the latter adopts a cool danceable posture reinforced with syncopation and the presence of a shaker. The opposite scenario is set up on “Downbear” whose dark and gloomy textures depicted by distorted guitar would give a great doom-metal piece. These sonic waves impel Black to adventure himself a little bit more by the end.

Obeying intricate time signatures and packed with clear-cut unisons, “Nongeniality” showcases strong melodic ideas turned into ostinatos. They keep echoing all through Slavin’s eloquent, cliché-free improvisation.
The somber “E Dance” concentrates forthright bass plucks, flickering guitar cries, and an edgy drumming that toggles between adaptably human and metrically robotic. A unified sonic cloud grows simultaneously spacious, intense, and haunting.

Slightly jazzier, “Spectral” is a ruminative song whose sound propagations lead us to atmospheric realms borrowed from ambient electronica and neo-glam. With bass and drums anchored in a polyrhythmic web, both guitar and sax comfortably seek freedom to roam.

Sometimes thinly polished, sometimes strenuous and unyielding, Other Animal creates interesting and variegated soundscapes dipped in the independent rock genre.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Drown Dreams ► 02 - Name of Cold Country ► 06 - Nongeniality