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Moritz Stahl: Traumsequenz
(Unit Data UTR5150. Album overview by Frank Graham)
There’s one thing concerning the profession path of Munich-based saxophonist Moritz Stahl which speaks each to his nice musical curiosity and persistence. Gaining priceless expertise as a member of the techno-influenced Jazzrausch Bigband, Stahl can also be a daily collaborator with shut good friend Philipp Schiepek (guitar), pianist Luca Zambito and singer Fiona Grond. He enjoys a parallel as a producer of digital music below the title odizouu, and now in his early thirties he’s lastly releasing Traumsequenz (“dream sequence”), his management debut.
The challenge was hatched in 2022, Stahl and Schiepek handpicking a gaggle of musicians to carry out his compositions at a collection of Summer time live shows. Julius Windisch (piano, keyboards) is without doubt one of the most fun prospects from the Berlin scene, Leipzig primarily based Lorenz Heigenhuber (bass) brings an enormous woody tone, and Leif Berger (drums) is garnering a rising repute as a robust presence throughout the Cologne scene.
Following the success of those live shows, the group reconvened in Might 2023 on the Kyberg Studio in Munich to report an album brimming with confidence and pleasingly freed from cliché. On the centre of group’s dynamics is the fixed push-pull between musicians and materials, Stahl’s very open buildings affording every musician beneficiant house to breathe. The seventeen tracks are thoughtfully sequenced, by no means settling in a single place for too lengthy however shifting in a really pure movement. 5 freely improvised “episodes” and the 5 half “Traumsequenz” are scattered amongst Stahl’s longer-form compositions, and in a properly self-referential contact the improvised episodes are drawn from rejected takes of “Procrastination Episode”.
From the opening bars of “Introducing” we’re drawn into an inviting house, Stahl’s multi-sectioned items directly suggesting the angularity of Paul Motian and the darkish, sinuous actions of Wayne Shorter. His forceful tenor solo on “Procrastination Episode” momentarily remembers Gary Thomas, however in the principle it’s tough to discern any overt influences in his taking part in past Shorter. Schiepek introduces his supple nylon-stringed guitar to the extra open-textured “Salzweisen”, our first likelihood to listen to the fabulously ingenious Windisch at size, and the primary of the dream sequences, “Lenticular Labyrinth”, is as disorienting as its title suggests, Stahl’s commanding tenor finally discovering the centre.
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Elsewhere the atmospheric abstractions of “The Ominous” show a kinship to Motian’s mid-‘80s collaborations with Lovano and Frisell, and the uneven rhythms and evocative electro-acoustic textures of fifth dream sequence “Luxe Cache” make it one of many set’s most arresting items. Stahl switches to soprano for the beautiful Shorter-esque ballad “Olivers Pensive”, each Schiepek and Stahl negotiate knotty post-bop terrain on the almost swinging “Lonk”, and the closing “Aiglatson” even carries a faint whiff of nostalgia. For probably the most half Stahl’s gaze is fastened firmly on the long run, however fleeting moments like these remind us he’s a part of an extended custom.
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