Moritz Von Oswald Trio

Honest Jon’s Records

I expected to dig the new Moritz Von Oswald Trio album – because I spent a bit of time with 2012’s Fetch and liked the murky worlds of throbbing synth/bass-lines as a kind of post-techno, post-nightclub late night soak of sound. But I didn’t anticipate would be the album I’d have trouble taking off my stereo; playing it over and again day after day. Then again, when I signed up for this one the drawcard, aside from the usual sounds of the German multi-instrumentalist/producer, was the drumming of Tony Allen.

Readers will know I love Tony Allen’s elasticated groove; the way when the hi-hat splays and his hands do their tumble-dance across the toms, the way that no one else can sound quite like him…

So yeah, this is all of the best I’ve come to know of the Moritz sound with Allen working away as quiet shining light, whether it’s the supple, twisted jazz walk of the opening Sounding Line 1 or the dancehall buck to Sounding Line 3’s opening moments; the way the cymbals do the talking on Sounding Line 4, or the hi-life groove returns for Sounding Line 6.

Turns out Allen has been a feature of the live band for a while now, but this is his first record with the group. Max Loderbauer supplies the synths while Von Oswald is, as such, the guiding hand – you can almost feel his presence as conductor, allowing Allen to open up with the fills when Sounding Line 6 reaches its murky depth, pushing the patches of Loaderbauer’s sound into place, deciding which traces to leave as trails into other worlds.

There’s a hip-hop slant to the penultimate Sounding Line 7, a touch of the Krautrock element too, robotic, stringent the – and then the closing Sounding Line 8 reminds of the soft touches that were always there on the outside of Von Oswald’s 90s productions, of contemporaries from that time too such as The Omni Trio.

What a perfect level of freedom this must be for Allen, and he revels in it and creates something akin to a sense of freedom in the sound – still with his machine-like focus and insistence of groove, but loose-limbed in a way that the machine could never be.

I’ve been drifting off to sleep to this album, I’ve been walking home with it under the headphones, it’s been everywhere with me.

Another in a long line of the year’s finest releases.