The DLW trio has been working together for twelve years now and is now setting the tone in the modern European music scene, as the trio has long since left the boundaries of jazz behind. DLW, that is the sound-painting vibraphonist Christopher Dell, the virtuoso Danish bassist Jonas Westergaard and the German star drummer Christian Lillinger. Supermodern is the project that brings the three DLW musicians together with US pianist Bob Degen. This music is also unikal. It is a reference to the legendary Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ), which in the 1950s was the link between chamber jazz and European classical music. With Supermodern, this reference to the MJQ is illuminated from the perspective of European avant-garde music, rather than its African-American roots, which nevertheless resonate respectfully throughout.DLW has developed a concept based on repetition and difference. The starting point for a piece is always a single bar, which is rhythmically interlaced and repeated trance-like until the smallest irregularities occur, which are written down and creatively processed further. From this superimposed combinatorics (Christopher Dell) a perpetuum-mobile-like sound movement develops, which is further radicalized on record by sound alienations and cut-up techniques. Thus respectfully wrote the Neue Züricher Zeitung in August 2023.Word has long since spread outside the German jazz scene that the DLW projects are always musically new. This is also the case with the double LP Supermodern 2, with recordings made in 2021 in analog at the MPS studio in the Black Forest. Together with US pianist Bob Degen, who has been one of the creative voices of the German jazz scene for about 50 years, they play high-energy music, with sparkling virtuosity and close communication. A musical treat, further enriched by the immensely present analog sound of this recording.
