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Lane change on the audiobahn
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The genre-jumping vibes of Germany's Jazzanova
by SCOTT C
For many of us, the Berlin-based musical movements of the Jazzanova collective represent the marriage between authentic musicianship and the always-popular dancefloor banger. This unusually extended group of Germans (Claas Brieler, Jurgen von Knoblauch, Alex Barck, Stefan Leisering, Axel Reinemer and Roscoe Kretschmann) have been responsible for some of the most memorable, not to mention danceable, remixes the late '90s have seen. With the world still waiting for their first full-length album to be released, they're balancing playing Montreal's Jazz Festival against studio time.
Mirror: So you're at the studio right now?
Claas Brieler: Studio and office are one thing here. It's all together.
M: What are you guys working on at the present?
CB: The album!
M: Ah yes, the album. Are you getting tired of people probing you about the release date?
CB: I think it's been awful because it was two years ago when we told people that we were going to start the album. There were so many remixes, though, and other things that we got involved in, work we were doing for friends in Berlin. If someone needed percussion, or studio equipment, we were there. I don't think that we're lazy.
M: I guess it just came time to start turning people down in order to work on your own thing.
CB: Well, believe it or not, that workload took us up to about a month ago, when we were working on the Bootsy Collins stuff. We also worked on a lot of original compositions, but it's not enough to constitute a whole album.
M: What are some of the remixes you've turned down?
CB: (laughs) There's about 20 or 30. If we don't like the original at all, we're not interested in doing the remix. Sometimes the track is not interesting, but the artist did a lot of good work in the past, so we have to think about it first. Sometimes the idea comes and the whole thing takes a week and a half, but very often we sit there for three months.
M: You know how, when acid jazz was tapering, you could feel the end coming? Do you ever look at the kind of dance music you make and feel the end is near?
CB: That's a hard question. For example, lots of South American, Latin and Brazilian influences have been used over the last three years. Most of the output I can't agree on. The majority of the stuff puts the whole movement into an easy light, a cheesy light. On the other hand, if something becomes a movement it needs carriers. It needs people.
M: But it still goes back to quality, not quantity.
CB: Exactly. Even acid jazz at its height was split into two movements: music that respected artists of the past, as well as new productions. Most of the latter I couldn't agree on. Our inspiration very often comes from older ideas, in fact. We try to recognize that certain spiritual thing, the timeless things that are immediately felt in older compositions.
With Laurent de Wilde at the Spectrum on Friday, June 29, midnight, $17.50
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