Jazzrausch Bigband
Bangers Only!

Jazzrausch Bigband
Directed and produced by Roman Sladek
Music by Leonhard Kuhn*

Cover art by Lena Maidl (sturmtiefdesign)


In the decade since it was founded, the German “Jazzrausch Bigband” has made a habit of combining things which are normally considered to be opposites: techno and jazz; classical and underground electronica; the concert hall and the club; the young and the old. A permanent awareness of dichotomy seems completely hard-wired, so for these musicians there is no such thing as the impossible. They have made it their habit to think and to live in big structures, to work programmatically like a classical orchestra, and also to take on themes from literature, philosophy, science and classical music, and then to interpret and process them in a way which is completely their own. One might choose to call it "pushing boundaries"; bandleader/trombonist Roman Sladek prefers to call it "a humongous excess of nerdiness".

For the album "Bangers Only!" Jazzrausch Bigband chose a different focus. They have concentrated on a form which is by its nature tight and compact: here are thirteen "bangers", the kind of hits that no self-respecting concert or playlist should ever be without. We’re fixed on the three- to four-minute song form here. So everything is about sticking to the point, or often just getting straight down to it. So we hear the very catchy, yet refined "Moebius Strip", the funky "I Want To Be A Banana" or the brass thunderstorm "Punkt und Linie zur Fläche". The other half of the setlist is new, the list of ingredients is typically long for Jazzrausch Bigband: techno, disco and funk beats, thick walls of brass alongside wide, airy surfaces, plus vocals, spoken word and improvisation. Euro-dance borrowings are new - sweet, garish and juicy.

That said, they never let it get too sweet, because the band, and especially their chief composer/arranger Leonhard Kuhn are masters of keeping things in balance: what is always present and clearly audible is his genuine and completely un-ironic love for all of these contrasting styles. And also the joy he has in deconstructing them and tearing them down, the constant alternation of fun and seriousness. "Bangers Only!" shows that the band has found a way to root this repertoire in its own, thorougly recognisable sound, one which has become familiar to a large and diverse fan base and which has a way of combining everything into one big, well-rounded whole.

The group of some 35 young musicians who form the Jazzrausch collective has played almost 1,000 shows in 15 countries since it was founded. Up to and including "Bangers Only!", they have released 12 albums, nine of them on ACT. And since the beginning of 2024, the band has been welcomed into a permanent home: the impressive, newly opened BERGSON Kunstkraftwerk to the west of Munich. This is something of a coming-of-age of the ideas behind Jazzrausch Bigband. The fact that the band is playing in an impressive new venue as a house ensemble takes us all the way back to their beginnings in 2014 as artists in residence at Munich techno club "Harry Klein". So the question is whether what started as a small idea can also be made to work on the large scale? Yes it can, and for two reasons: first because this music combines the familiar with new discoveries, whatever the listener’s level of familiarity with it might be. And secondly because this music has the kind of intensity which is always going to draw listeners right in. Every time.