Nils Wogram - The Pristine Sound of Root 70 (2023)

"Old-fashioned" is a wonderfully old-fashioned word that exists in almost every language. "Old fashioned" or "démodé" - while this term had a dusty connotation just a few years ago, today it expresses the opposite of being outdated, instead conveying a self-determined resistance to rapidly incoming new trends and technological developments that shape our lives but at the same time detach us from them because we always have to keep an eye on the next new thing. "The Pristine Sound Of Root 70," the new album by Nils Wogram's band Root 70, is, in the best sense of the word, old-fashioned in a very lively, refreshing, and authentic way. It allows us to pause, reflect, breathe, and decelerate. From the first note, it offers something familiar that only wants to be rediscovered and adapted. If you want to refer to the past, the album sounds like a meeting of the Gerry Mulligan Bob Brookmeyer Quartet with the Albert Mangelsdorff Quartet of the late 1960s. Trombonist Nils Wogram, saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Jochen Rueckert manage to open entirely new doors and windows for our time with the combative serenity of those years.