Loktor - Loktor of Heaven (2019)

Yes, jazz can also be danceable. At least you can come to the conclusion, you can hear through "Loork Of Heaven" (Session Work Records), the new album of the Steirer Dreiers LOKTOR.

First of all, jazz really has not got much to do with the three musicians Bernhard Ludescher (piano, keyboards), Thomas Stabler (drums) and Thomas Wilding (bass). Of course it plays a role, but more, as the trio is actually oriented and executed on this, it extends its musical spectrum to many other stylistic facets. Thus, in the fusion sound of Loktor a lot of funk finds its way, as well as remind the synth games more to the great electronics pioneers of the 70s and 80s like Jean Michel Jarre and consorts than really anything jazz-like. Unmistakable is also the preference for music forms such as hip-hop and partly disco. To sprinkle over, as if the sound was not so varied enough, there are still some elements of South American music sounding through here and there.

But even otherwise, the trio pursues a more jazz-like line. Loktor focuses on catchiness. Really highly complex, it does not really matter, but that does not mean that the compositions are simpler from a playful point of view. No, on the contrary, Bernhard Ludescher and his colleagues know how to handle their instruments very well, only they never really let this circumstance be felt. And this is precisely where one of the strengths of this triad is revealed: the music is located in a constant flow, in one that often even reaches into the purely danceable and therefore opens up very quickly.

The numbers, which are wrapped up in a warm basic sound and worked out in great detail, have drive and are bursting with dynamism. The music of Loktor receives its excitement mainly through the recurrent increases and condensations as well as through constant changes between "laid back" marked by abrupt changes in tempo and melodious moments reduced to sound and extremely playful passages with daredevil improvisations. The nice thing about the whole thing is that everything - from the first to the last second - has an unrivaled effect, that the numbers open up for this reason really on the shortest path.

In any case, with "Loktor Of Heaven", the trio around Bernhard Ludescher presents an album in which certainly not only friends of jazz should enjoy it.