Joel Holmes - Into The Abyss (2023)

Once known solely for electronic music, Berlin has quietly gone through huge changes over the past years. While the queues in front of the techno clubs become shorter and shorter, the city is slowly converting into a melting pot for all sorts of musicians and artists with amazing instrumentalists, producers and bands from all over the world moving to the German capital to create a new scene. As a result Berlin has come out with some of the craziest, non-conformist types of music. Toy Tonics sister label Kryptox has started to establish itself as a key platform for this new scene.

One of the protagonists of this scene is Joel Holmes, former member of Carl Craig's synthesizer ensemble and keyboarder of (Grammy-nominated) cult band Roy Hargrove. Joel's new album ‘Into The Abyss’ is a perfect capturing of the current moment in Berlin, but it also taps into international talent such as acclaimed flutist Tenderlonious from London.

Few people bridge the gap between jazz and electronic music as successfully as Holmes. Over the past years, he’s been working with some of jazz’s most relevant artists incl. Roy Hargrove, Curtis Fuller, Javon Jackson, Nnenna Freelon, Curtis Lundy and Jimmy Cobb. Once tapped into electronic music too he made records with legends such as Carl Craig. Working with techno artists made him curious about the new dance scene resulting in his moved to Berlin where he quickly starting making music with the likes of Cody Currie and Kapote.

Joel describes the album in his own words as follows: "The next album "Into the Abyss," is the first time I recorded music through the lens of different landscapes and on 2 different continents reflecting the times of today’s music that is mirroring what is happening in our communities and worlds today. From dark colors to light, music is so diverse and I tried to reflect this in my album. This is also the first time I have had this many special guests on an album. So I‘m excited about this.“

Tracklist:
1 01. Joel Holmes, Tenderlonious - Broken Styles (05:45)
1 02. Joel Holmes, Tenderlonious - The Universe (07:07)
1 03. Joel Holmes; Cory Baker; Theljon Allen - Brighter Days (03:31)
1 04. Joel Holmes; Roberto Manzin - Hot Sauce (05:42)
1 05. Joel Holmes; Desney Bailey - We Got The Power (04:02)
1 06. Joel Holmes, Tenderlonious - Troublesome (05:27)
1 07. Joel Holmes, Tenderlonious - Little David (05:40)
1 08. Joel Holmes - The Question (Interlude) (04:44)
1 09. Joel Holmes - Into the Abyss (04:18)
1 10. Joel Holmes - We Got The Power (06:41)