DAS B. — Love

From scouring the pages of Google, it’s clear that free-jazz ensemble Das B. place greater emphasis on their music than sustaining a public profile. And why trouble oneself with such 21st-century concerns when you are producing music of this calibre? Formed in 2014, when Lebanese trumpeter Mazen Kerat, keen to continue the sonic explorations he’d been developing for over a decade in his native Beirut, started to assemble a group of Berlin-based musicians.  He approached collaborators pianist Magda Mayas and drummer Tony Buck, followed shortly by bassist Mike Majkowski and the quartet set off on tour, pledging their allegiance to the world of noise exploration. With their debut Canopy released in 2020 - a live performance recorded three years previously, now comes their first studio effort, a re-imagining of John Coltrane’s seminal A Love Supreme, recorded in 2022 and simply called Love. 

Kerbaj knew both Magdas and Buck long before he arrived in Germany. A Berlin-based pianist redefining the sonic possibilities of her instrument, Magdas is both solo artist and collaborator. Part of all-female trio Jane in Ether and ensemble Filamental, she is also one half of Spill with Tony Buck, primarily known as the drummer in Australian jazz improvisation trio, The Necks. Given their credentials, it’s unsurprising that Kerbaj made a beeline for both Magdas and Buck when he was putting together a new band. He was, however, less familiar with bassist Mike Majkowski. A compatriot of Buck, Majkowski had moved in similar circles to his fellow Das B members, embracing improvisation and playing with sound - de rigeur for someone who has performed with a disconcertingly impressive list of musicians including Marshall Allen, Oren Ambarchi and Evan Parker. Recommended by Buck and Magdas, Kerbaj soon realised that Majkowski was the perfect fit for Das B.

And it was after almost a decade of performing together that they finally ventured into the studio. Jointly released by Stockholm’s Thanatosis Records and Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey, Love is a “structural cover” of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. What it is not is a traditional reworking of the modal jazz masterpiece. The band take their dynamic and structural cues from the album, but all the hallmarks of the original are gone. “We are not attempting to recreate the album,” say the band. “Rather we took the original album’s track timing and instrumental structure…our idea was to link our music – free improv – to its roots in jazz and free jazz.”

Centred on piano, percussion and bass, the sax swapped out for Kerbaj’s trumpet, the musicality of Coltrane’s 1965 album is replaced by the driving and masterful drums of Buck, which press throughout the four-tracks doubling up as both anchor and harmony; Mayas’ piano used here in equally percussive ways – its customary form rarely rearing its head; and Majkowski’s propulsive bass which sounds particularly breathtaking on centrepiece ‘Love, Part 3’.  The final piece of the puzzle is, of course, Kerbaj’s trumpet, which once again deviates from its usual role, straddling the synergistic interplay of the other three instruments. Love is a multilayered piece of work that draws on Coltrane’s meditative spirit while toying with the configuration of free jazz. Marvellous.