Thinking outside the (Beat)Box

Who doesn't long for clarity, calm, peace these days... We all know by now that there are no simple answers for the complex problems of our time, BUT: there are simple melodies that appeal to our sensuality, to our humanity, that open spaces through their simplicity. Stories that lie like a warm blanket over the mental overload in our brain. And so music gives us strength that lingers.

Andreas Schaerer and Kalle Kalima have reinvented themselves for their new project 'Evolution'. Normally contemporary jazz and electronic music belong to their playgrounds. Quite a top musical sport, if you pursue it as seriously as the two of them: They have been on stage together for ten years, among others with the quartet "A Novel Of Anomaly". Especially for the vocal artist Schaerer, who gained attention through his creative beatboxing and his band “Hildegard Lernt Fliegen”, perfect body control and ingenuity that can be called up on command were normal everyday life on stage.
And now: "Four Chords and the Truth"? No. But maybe "twisted jazzcore ballads", because they are indeed ballads written by Andreas Schaerer and Kalle Kalima (with his partner Essie Kalima). It's about self-optimization, as in "Mutitasking", about obsessions, as in "Piercing Love", about science fiction dreams and of course about love and loss. What's interesting about it is the in-between world in which the songs are set, as if Henry David Thoreau were wandering around in one of James Cameron's fantasy forests.
Musically, the two dare to do a lot. Until now, Schaerer has mainly painted with lutes, but now he wants to lend weight to content with his voice. And Kalima now heads for depth of feeling instead of dizzying technical flights of fancy. Together with the congenial Tim Lefebvre on bass, both take a short leave from perfection and the fast lane for this project and turn their innermost to the outside. - Think outside the (Beat)Box! (Pressetext)

Maybe you know this: We are sitting in a very exciting concert and are completely sucked in. The concert has been running for about forty minutes and is, yes, complex. We marvel without being overwhelmed and are sucked in, especially because of the unfamiliarity, partly also the intelligence of the sounds. It is multilayered, profound. We could wander deeper and deeper into it with our ears.
And then suddenly: this totally simple melody, a song structure, quite clear in comparison. Suddenly the light goes on, we the world wide and the seriousness, with which is told, arises from the reduction. It arises from the "nothing to prove", from the sudden absence of obvious complexity. And it arises because our ear is already so open that it hits us with full force.
The new album by Andreas Schaerer, Kalle Kalima and Tim Levebvre is that moment. Anyone who has ever accidentally stumbled into a concert space in Europe knows the three of them. Of course, the album is not a complete reboot: we hear Lefebvre playing on David Bowie's album "Blackstar"; we hear the last "Hildegard Lernt Fliegen" album in Schaerer's melodic lead; we hear Kalle Kalima's love of the blues. And yet, somehow, everything is quite different.
Probably Schaerer's most songlike album to date is called "Evolution" - in this case, certainly: development - and will be released on September 29 on ACT Music. (Sonia Loenne)