Almost Natural

A maze is a place where you get lost, whereas a labyrinth is a place where you find yourself. On his album "Almost Natural", Cologne bassist Florian Herzog breaks through the narrow dividing wall between labyrinth and maze and creates a refuge where not only he and his fellow musicians, but also the listeners of the record can find and lose themselves at the same time. Basically, "Almost Natural" thrives on brilliantly balanced contrasts. The hyperactive meets the relaxed, the binding meets the non-binding, the synthetic meets the organic, the abstract meets the accessible, the broken meets the continuously flowing, the groovy meets the avant-garde. Herzog explores all the nooks and crannies of his musical personality without ever losing sight of the epicenter. He is not afraid of extremes, but they are always defined by the common center. "When I write, I always focus on these contrasts," says the bassist. "Free improvisation is incredibly important to me. Despite all the abstraction, I always look for a core that makes the music accessible. This can be a melody or a groove that makes you nod your head, even if you don't really understand what's going on when you listen to it. With the album's setlist, as with the course of a live concert, I know that after five minutes of chaos you need a few melodies or chords to relax. On a large and small scale." Herzog deliberately misleads the ear in the first two tracks. The opener "Listening Integrity" is a firework of abstraction and wildness, while the second song "Advanced Computer Music" is gently reminiscent of the sound aesthetics of fusion jazz without lacking in structural complexity. Herzog continues to make extremely diverse offerings, as if one were flying over an archipelago of islands with very different climatic conditions, geological formations and population densities. And yet all these islands belong to one and the same archipelago. Herzog deliberately placed these two songs, which could hardly be more contrasting, at the beginning of the album, not only to define the spectrum of the songs, but also to generate a maximum level of attention through the positive shock of the aesthetic system change when listening. Much of it sounds like free jazz at first, but Herzog retains far too much control over the overall musical process for it to be truly genuine free jazz. With his colleagues Elias Stemeseder on piano and synthesizer, Sebastian Gille on saxophone and Leif Berger on drums, the bassist has three comrades-in-arms with whom he can not only explore every conceivable playing ground, but who can also - to stay with the above image - completely lose themselves individually and collectively in any situation, only to find each other again just as quickly and intuitively. Which brings us to another mutually dependent contrast: the permanent dualism between holding on and letting go. Herzog and his three fellow musicians share a symbiosis that is best described by the album title almost natural. In blind agreement, they dash off together, catching each other, penetrating each other, at times also separating themselves from each other in order to immediately dissolve the demarcation lines they have created together. In the collective play, the center of momentum is constantly shifting. Florian Herzog has known drummer Leif Berger the longest. The two musicians from Cologne have formed a stable rhythm unit in various formations for around ten years. Herzog emphasizes that they have grown alongside and with each other during this period, without either of them ever having played in the other's band. With "Almost Natural", a long-cherished wish comes true. Herzog met the Austrian keyboard player Elias Stemeseder in New York. The two musicians were neighbors and never missed an opportunity to play together. Like Berger, Stemeseder is characterized by an almost limitless intuitive flexibility that allows him not only to react spontaneously to any context, but also to always anticipate and create. His sounds, especially on the synthesizer, which he uses in the origin of the word for explicit sound synthesis, are not least the binding agent that holds the intentions of the three others together. The partnership with saxophonist Sebastian Gille, known for his hussar rides, intensified during the Corona period. They met regularly with Leif Berger and began to lay the foundations for the pieces that have now been completed on "Almost Natural". Herzog himself not only acts as bassist and composer, but also as post-producer, who put his finger on the pulse after the real-time sessions and gave the songs their final polish. In the special qualities of this line-up, Florian Herzog has the courage to make a decision that is just as rare in jazz as in all other musical genres. The quartet is defined less by its common ground than by the individual contrasts of its members. This results in an almost explosive tension, regardless of whether it is the more dynamic parts or the quieter phases. The four musicians can encounter each other anew in each piece due to the differences in their respective positions. The interferences of approach and conception allow for an added value that goes far beyond what can be expected from the line-up of saxophone, keys, bass and drums. The usual distribution of roles is consistently broken up and the parts are arranged in new and always surprising ways. The dramaturgy of "Almost Natural" is best described by the song title "Misleading Energy". It is like an active volcano whose chimneys erupt here and there and spew boiling lava into the surrounding area, but whose fertile slopes are otherwise green and blooming. Reliable unpredictability - that is what distinguishes this album above all others.