About Us
Nominated for Deutscher Jazzpreis Bass for Sebastian Gramss (2022)
WDR Jazz award for Philip Zoubek (2020)
A double bass line ignites the voyage, not so far from M. Davis’s “So What”, but then again worlds away. The body of breath in the form of a saxophone and the sumptuous piano soon join as the first melody of “I” is intoned and the unmistakable sound of the trio is revealed again on this new studio album.
Freedom, the third full album by the Cologne trio stands for the word in every sense and radiates it with every note and gesture. This in 2021 when the very premises and foundations of the word are being again fundamentally questioned. Bandleader and composer Sebastian Gramss calls the music of the group Melodic Avantgarde – always able and willing to pierce through sonic or conceptual boarders unexpectedly, as if they were never there in the first place. Nothing is loud. Everything is uncompromising. It is telling indeed of our times, that such pure melodic gesture and reduction to the essence carries on high the flag of Avant Garde. But then again, so much has been turned on its head.
The title of the album goes back to an iconic sentence with which the great Nina Simone replied to an interviewer in 1968 when he asked about her definition of freedom: “I will tell you what freedom is to me: No fear. I mean really no fear.” Detached from the syntax, the words now serve as titles for the tracks on the Slowfox album. The essence of the content remains untouched in its original artistic reference, only the vertical typeset on the album now has each word opening up to reveal a miniature sonic pearl, a tiny fragment of freedom perhaps, or a soft whisper in its name.
Slowfox have made a small tradition of using quotation since their debut album The Woods (2014) which took a poem by Robert Frost as inspiration for the song titles. Following that, their ECHO award winning album Gentle Giants (2017) uses a fragment attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. Again, tiny words implode in sound. Intention is redefined and amplified a thousandfold, only to return to a gesture of astounding reduction.
Formed together in 2013 by Sebastian Gramss, the instrumental trio plays chamber music-like jazz compositions in an almost pop song format: short pieces, none longer than five minutes, which immediately cut through to an essence with a singular and enigmatic mix of conceptional complexity and executed simplicity. Simply put, there is no other trio that sounds anywhere close.
Freedom showcases the band in its maturity and the years of touring before the current concert pause can clearly be heard. We are now gifted with a gorgeous synthesis of contemporary aesthetics and melody with no stylistic restrictions. Like the word itself- the music makes us feel like there can be no limits. The fact that a carefully and meticulously constructed melodic avant grade can lead us to a place where it seems so natural, as freedom surely must be, even when it must be reinvented and redefined over and over, is a tribute to the subtle power and sweet understatement of this music.
