TAU 5 - Kreise (2020)

Supergroup is-admittedly-a somewhat smug term. But in autumn 2020, at a time when every possible group formation with great individuals is not only a reason for joy in art, we would like to call him back to the Plan. TAU5 is such a supergroup quintet based in Berlin, which consists of five dazzling personalities of the young European jazz scene:
Moritz Baumgärtner on drums and Percussion, Philipp Gropper on saxophone, Philip Zoubek on Electronic, Petter Eldh on Bass – and last but not least Ludwig Wandinger as producer and Editor. The editing work is indeed an important, almost compositional part of her debut album with the all-encompassing title "Kreise". Over the course of three years, the Material has drawn large circles at the various production interfaces. From the compositions and concepts to the final Mixdown. We listen to played notations, free Jams and New improvisations on already edited Sessions

on this circular double long-playing record. At TAU5, the end of a process is always seen as the beginning of a new process.
Here "Bitches Brew" meets the spirit of Eric Dolphy or Cecil Taylor under the production conditions of Ableton-Live. In many moments, "Kreise" is more reminiscent of Flying Lotus than of a classical live quintet of Free, Modern or Fusion Jazz. But of course TAU5 have the skills to bring this incredible music 1 to 1 on stage. After all, you are neither a curator's nor a producer's dream. We are talking about a Band:" next level shit", the neighbors from the hip hop department would probably say.
The musicians of TAU5 are as much influenced by hip-hop as by electronic music, just as Jazz has long since influenced young people from Pop to electronic music with a great deal of self-assurance. The Earth science teacher Muff of old has long gone. Thanks to the Internet. Not only him, but certainly also.
Anyway, the music continues to circulate merrily. Saxophones with sound-alienating Plug-Ins, complex, hand-played Drum Patterns and the Loops based on them. "Natural" Sounds and syntheses. Everything morphs into each other here, just like the Artwork of the Berlin artist Markus S. Fiedler, whose work no one can say with any certainty whether his pictorial worlds in all their colourful splendour are completely generated on the Computer, or whether it is just a Tableau on which photographic elements have been further processed on the computer.

What all these questions say about the media perception of our present, everyone may decide for themselves. The group TAU5 doesn't see this Album as a manifesto anyway, but as a description of states. As if one could listen for selected moments of the creation or preservation of systems. Yes, as if we listened to not only the bee but also the plant for a few minutes while pollinating a plant. Or the clouds up there on your journey from the sea to the nearest peasantry or Metropolis. Not to forget the passing cars. And the processors in our computers and Smartphones...
It is their great openness, curiosity and of course it is their immense abilities that make TAU5 the collective supergroup described at the beginning with a real super album. Fantastic!