moritz von oswald trio: fetch

After two previous studio albums and one live album through Honest Jon's, the Moritz Von Oswald Trio -- Moritz Von Oswald, Max Loderbauer (NSI/Sun Electric) and Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay/Luomo) -- returns with Fetch, their most fully-realized voyage yet. The Trio operates at the bleeding edges where musical lineages collide. Feeling for the shared heartbeat that pulses through dub, techno and jazz, it seeks out points of contact before exploding them outward into hypnotic explorations of rhythm, texture and tone. Fetch further cements the Moritz Von Oswald Trio's status as a unique voice in modern electronic music -- as supple, intuitive and alive as the most exploratory of jazz. Recorded in August 2011, Fetch finds Von Oswald, Loderbauer and Ripatti in a darker and more driving mood than on previous albums. Joined by ECM's Marc Muellbauer on bass (from second album Horizontal Structures) and Tobias Freund (for the first time since debut Vertical Ascent), to add live effects in real time, they laid down the foundations swiftly, with the entire recording completed in around four hours. Later, instrumental overdubs were added by Jonas Schoen (flute, bass clarinet, saxophone) and trumpeter Sebastian Studnitzky. As with their previous recordings, at the roots of the Trio's third studio album lie the same concerns which informed Von Oswald's pioneering work with Mark Ernestus as Basic Channel, Maurizio and Rhythm & Sound. At once umbilically connected to and completely distinct from all the musics that they draw from, the Trio's subliminal musings on the connections between musical forms are expressed by Fetch as a series of beguiling contradictions. Rigid vs. fluid; playful vs. deadly serious; machine vs. human; sensual vs. austere: all of these seemingly opposing forces are allowed to intermingle across four longform tracks. This is crackling, charged music -- electronica performed live, the players' neural impulses flowing into their instruments. Play loud through large speakers, and allow it room to breathe: these are sonic worlds that reach out and swallow the listener whole.