Hydropuls

This gritty quintet from Saarbrücken is co-led by trombonist Christof Thewes – a veteran improviser who’s worked with Squakk and Die Enttäuschung, and who currently plays in Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra – and electric bassist Tom Lengert, a French native with a hard rock background. Hydropuls possesses a fiery attack melding free-form improvisation within a groove-heavy jazz-rock framework. Thewes and baritone saxophonist Hartmut Oswald shape the quintet’s burly melodic shapes with an appealingly gruff but still fluid low-end over roiling funk. The band lives up to the title of its forthcoming album “High Speed Underground”, ripping through the compact charts with assured ferocity, with each soloist unleashing solos at a blistering pace. Guitarist Johannes Schmitz possesses a sound braiding funk and rock that recalls the frantic mayhem of New York’s late 1970s no wave scene. But the knotty compositions by Thewes and Lengert are as refined as they are aggressive, and the band’s attack reveals a razor-sharp precision.

This concert is part of the To Jazzfest erlin Radio Edition