MUSIC

actual CD:
POLYTHEISTIC ENSEMBLE signals from the cool
Neuklang Future NCD4138

available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music…

… In Matthias Ockert's case, receiving Signals from the Cool is to be understood in a programmatic sense. His music processes influences from the sound-worlds of other jazz musicians in surroundings that are metrically and rhythmically complex, and yet frequently dance-like; the one, after all, does not necessarily rule the other out. Timbre and melody in Ockert's music are informed first and foremost by an affinity for stringed instruments. It is a music in which rock elements and aleatoric techniques are equally at home, a music which is carefully constructed and balanced, but which cannot make do with musicians who simply play what is written on the page in front of them. This music is conceived for realisation as a collective process for which each participant must take responsibility, none being left to his or her own devices – not even in the soli, for which the ensemble effort frequently makes way – and every one being required to exercise precision in listening. Matthias Ockert's music doesn't just sound like jazz, it is jazz, but it renders any and every demarcation between jazz and composition obsolete.
(from the Liner Notes of Hans-Jürgen Linke)