Phalanx

In the organizer's words:

The martial band name is a little misleading: the quartet Phalanx does not sound like a closed front, but is an open system. The main coordinates are jazz and something avant-garde metal-like that can hardly be defined. Anything can happen within these coordinates, and when the band speaks of "25 ideas" per composition, this is still a modest formulation.

The wealth of ideas and beauty of Phalanx's music arise from poles that are still traditionally opposed to each other: Jazz on the one hand, rock and noise on the other. Or in terms of instruments: the piano on one side, an electric guitar distorted in many interesting ways on the other. Jazz rock, so to speak - but without everything that often makes classic jazz rock so gruesome. In other words, without any self-indulgent prancing around and bad gimmickry.

Instead, the three musicians around bandleader Mathieu Bech play an amalgam of jazz and avant-rock. Pieces in which elegiac piano melodies can be replaced by a freewheeling guitar without a change of genre; in which the neoclassical is interrupted by noise and you think "Yes, that's right". Or, to quote a track title: "Now I realize it too".

The connections made in the music of Phalanx are actually new in this form and only possible because four musicians from very different projects and traditions come together here. The result is something new and previously unheard: jazz overflowing with melodies that has absorbed the intensity of rock and free improvisation.

Mathieu Bech - piano
Axel Zajac - guitar
Xaver Feest - bass
Johannes Pfingsten - drums