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root70

it's a surface paradise...

About Me

DOWNLOAD THE HEAPS DUB CD AT WWW.NONPLACE.DE
Root 70, Heaps Dub (Nonplace) Not only my favorite album of 2006; this is probably one of my favorite albums of the last five years. The backstory is almost too clever for its own good: jazz quartet arranges and performs the music of Burnt Friedman and Flanger (Friedman's collaborative hyperjazz project with Atom Heart), then turns over the tapes to Friedman himself, who remixes it all in a dizzying game of round-robin. But there's nothing pretentious or cutesy about the final product, which simply offers 10 tracks of dizzyingly expressive fare. It's the kind of album that makes you think about music in the way you think about language, raising ideas about logic, communication, abstraction, games, connotation, secrets and hints. The playing is wildly accomplished: virtuosic without calling undue attention to its own virtuosity, it's muscular, tender, and brilliantly nuanced. Bonus points for the fact that every track on the album is exactly five minutes long, and yet you'd never know it from listening alone. (I didn't figure out that factoid until after about 20 listens, when I happened to glance at the "Time" column in iTunes; I thought there must be some kind of database error, but no. Mr. Friedman, you are a cheeky bastard.) More bonus points: Nils Wogram's trombone solo on the closing "Nightbeat" is simply the most perfect 24 bars of music this year. PHILIP SHERBURNThe magic formula is “a culture of sound.” The band sound is more than the sum of the individual parts. The superior musical prowess of the four Root members can hardly be more unobtrusively presented than it is on Fahrvergnügen. Wogram and co. do not set performance goals that they have to reach but rather place their instruments solely in the service of the music. And suddenly they tease the listener into remembering: Ah, yes, jazz isn’t an athletic discipline after all, where maximum performance is what matters, but rather music. Wogram is a trombonist out of conviction, but he never wanted “to give priority to the technical difficulties. I want to be able to play everything that I hear. We have all worked really hard on bringing in our interests in other music and other instruments. Hayden is a globetrotter who has traveled to eastern Europe, India, and Africa and studied the music of these places. Jochen programs electronic music, and Matt has not only taken a serious look at the work of other bass players but of other instrumentalists as well.”Thus it is not least in the handling of its solos that Root 70 reveals where its musical ambitions lie. Only a very few solos are perceived as solo efforts at all. They are rather individual shades of an entire network of constellations that are feasible in this band. The generosity with which Wogram hands over his material to his band members is reminiscent of the greatest moments in jazz. “In this regard Ellington, Mingus, and Miles act as major role models for me. They let the musicians play without explaining too much. Most of the time the result sounds better than what I originally came up with.” INUITION LABEL RECORD RELEASE INFO

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 12/31/2006
Band Website: nonplace.de, nilswogram.com, softspeakers.com
Band Members: Nils Wogram -Trombone, Melodica.

Hayden Chisholm -Saxophone, Clarinet, Melodica.

Matt Penman -Bass.

Jochen Rückert -Drums.


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Influences:
Sounds Like: our mothers' cooking made sonic

British Jazz Journal wrote:
"If you've been wondering about the state of young, contemporary European jazz talent recently, look no further - and enjoy!"

John Kennedy in JAZZ:
" This music is brilliantly executed, bursting with wit. Root 70 illustrates how traditions can be both respected and resoundingly transgressed."

CODA Magazine:
"Wogram plays with pinpoint accuracy and rapid-fire linear invention. Hayden Chisholm plays alto with a Cool-School lightness ...combine this with his uncanny ability to elicit shkuhachi-like tones and you have one of the most offbeat, personal saxophone styles I've heard in a while."

Record Label: nonplace, intuition, enja
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

HEAPS DUB REVIEWS AND PReSS

Root 70, Heaps Dub (Nonplace)( Philip Sherburne ) Not only my favorite album of 2006; this is probably one of my favorite albums of the last five years. The backstory is almost too clever for its own ...
Posted by root70 on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 07:11:00 PST

Reviews of the First Album

Root 70 (2nd Floor 008) Smart, nervy, hard-bitten jazz from a quartet of young players led by the remarkable German trombonist Nils Wogram. Despite the album's variety  sample the gorgeous "Sushi...
Posted by root70 on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 12:48:00 PST