Unday Jazz | Fusion 4 Items

Limited edition LP on Colored Vinyl. The band around Bert Dockx (Dans Dans, Flying Horseman) transformed once again and is now a quartet.They developped new compositions with an even richer language fluttering and wailing in jazz, impro, electronics and krautrock.

Ottla is a bird that not only sings beautifully but also vigorously flaps and squawks. Also known as a band that Bert Dockx formed to play together once to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Jazz Lab concert series. Fortunately, Dockx and the musicians he gathered for that anniversary sextet quickly found much enthusiasm and more opportunities to play together. In 2019, what initially seemed like a fleeting experiment transformed into composing, rehearsing, recording an album, and playing more. Ottla's fluttering spirit appeared to have cooled down, at least for a while. However, when Josse De Pauw asked Dockx to improvise during a monologue he was working on in 2021, an alternative version of Ottla quickly appeared by Dockx's side. The mystery and madness of Eduardo Galeano's "Chronicle of Fire" (1986), the monologue in question, found a musical counterpart. In addition to the requested improvisation, Dockx developed several new compositions, expanded by Ottla with lyrical guitar passages, improvised clarinet solos, rustling effects, and a sometimes cool, then warm, dark rhythm section. The result was a powerful performance (and live EP) and the clear insight that this new Ottla is no mockingbird.

A new repertoire was in the works, but performing it was temporarily out of the question. Bert's acute back problems in the fall of 2021 dampened the enthusiasm. All music was set aside but fortunately only for a while. Music has always been the language through which Dockx found meaning and order in the world, so this heavy physical and emotional setback would also find its response in music. From that dark period emerged the album "Ghosts," released under the new name Bert Dockx Band in October of this year. That album seems much more like a cage in search of a bird, to speak with a Kafkaesque aphorism (Ottla is also Kafka's sister's first name).

Ottla's latest album, "Vogel" (Bird), is the full awakening after "Ghosts." The window flies open, the sun burns. Fluttering and wailing in jazz-improv-electro-noise-prog-afro-blues-groove-punk-krautrock, Ottla, true to its Kafkaesque nature, transformed once again, and the quartet began further developing the compositions with an even richer language. The album showcases significant contrasts in strength and color between songs, often even within one song. There exists no rivalry between Thomas Jillings and Bert Dockx, but rather a playful dialogue. Jillings, the multi-instrumentalist, expanded his setup and plays saxophone, clarinet, and various synthesizers. The bass and drum parts of Gerben Brijs and Louis Evrard provide tension and thunder, with effects resonating from their amplifiers like mist in an enchanted forest.

To further explore the new music, the quartet performed a series of café concerts in 2022 and some try-outs in 2023. Finally, last summer, they entered the studio to capture "Vogel." In Studio Ledeberg, Peter Desmedt's cage, the spontaneity and dynamics of the performances were preserved, with room for overdubs to enrich the songs just a bit more. The result is an album full of exciting twists: a series of new songs that will undoubtedly continue to transform live. The bird is free.

Standard edition on black vinyl. Dans Dans is back (already), with their most unfiltered, most spantenous, most 'punk' album to date. Three musicians, three days in the studio, one burst of energy.

You might know Bert Dockx from the inimitable alternative jazz-rock-trio Dans Dans; or from his moody, psychedelic rock formation Flying Horseman; or from his more intimate but equally special solo records. In 2019, the ever productive guitarist released an album with Ottla, a jazzy sextet blending different genres, textures and moods in wholly original ways, resulting in long, evocative pieces, brooding with tension and atmosphere. Recently, the band has transformed into a quartet, a tighter unit with a sparser and slightly more electric sound. This new Ottla is playing a mixture of reimagined tracks from the aforementioned album, and several brand new pieces. Ottla's music - like all music for which Dockx is responsible - is imaginative, intense and deeply felt.

In the spring of 2021, actor and writer Josse De Pauw contacted Bert with a question. He wanted to perform work of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano on stage, texts about the madness of colonialism and slavery, and about the beauty and mystery of the jungle, and asked Dockx to come up with a live soundtrack. Dockx invited two friends from his jazz band Ottla (Thomas Jillings and Louis Evrard) and a fourth musician (bass player Axel Gilain). He composed new material, adapted some existing Ottla pieces and could count on the improvisational talent of his fellow musicians for the rest of the soundtrack. In a handful of rehearsals, an impressive concert was put together that captivated the audience during a short run in August. This live EP contains two pieces recorded on one of these blistering evenings. Side A opens with the authoritarian voice of De Pauw, who recites the Song of the Fire, before making way for a scorching, almost apocalyptic version of 'Stofwolk'. On side B we hear Thomas Jillings perform an impressionist clarinet improvisation while De Pauw conjures up images of the unlimited sea and the winds, ships and slaves, heaven and hell.

On the band's third album 'In Velvet', Nordmann reinvent themselves, causing a profound shift in their distinctive sound.They trade in the rock influences in favour of synths, electronic textures and beats. The new music is more reflective, though without ever losing focus on the instincts.