MONIKA ROSCHER BIGBAND
WITCHY ACTIVITIES AND THE MAPLE DEATH
new album
2xLP | CD | digital
out 05.05.23
(Zenna Records/Membran)
BLOODY BRILLIANT BIG BAND BOUNDARY BASHING BETWEEN : BABYLON BERLIN | BATTLES | BJÖRK
“A bloody brilliant big band somewhere near the gap between Battles and Björk, but they’re way beyond that. Never heard of them, but love it! Brilliant!”
THE ORGAN
“An epic adrenalin rush. Innovative and grand, groundbreaking and ambitious, once you start playing it you won’t want to stop”
OUTSIDE LEFT
“A unique blend of jazz, highbrow prog-rock and theatrical vocals. It floats like a magic spell”
ALT77
“Epic, dramatic and loud. If you’re not sure on first listening, try it again – the music will grow on you”
COSMIC JAZZ
includes the singles
8 PRINZESSINNEN [8 PRINCESSES]
video
FIREBIRD
video
+
A TASTE OF THE APOCALYPSE
video
STARLIGHT NIGHTCRASH
video
MONIKA ROSCHER BIGBAND | photo by Lukas Diller
Monika Roscher Bigband (MRB) consists of 18 musicians and exists somewhere between math-rock, prog-jazz, avant-pop and experimental electronics. Formed in Munich in 2011, they soon made waves with thrilling live performances and the inventive ideas of Roscher, their founder, singer, guitarist and conductor. Their first two albums, ‘Failure in Wonderland’ (2012) and ‘Of Monsters and Birds’ (2016), were met with acclaim in Germany, where Jazz Echo proclaimed them ‘Newcomer of the Year’, but they also caused a stir internationally, with the US magazine DownBeat naming them as ‘Rising Stars’.
Their brand new album, ‘Witchy Activities And The Maple Death’, is stunning proof of how fresh and exhilarating MRB sound today. Superbly recorded, it achieves a breathtaking balance of intimate fragility and symphonic intensity that lets the full sonic spectrum of a big band scream and shine in every colour imaginable. Roscher’s tension-filled and intricately detailed compositions evoke otherworldly landscapes that at times enchant with their elegiac beauty, but at others wreak havoc like the unleashed frenzy of a witches’ sabbath thick with haze.
An intense and epic introductory single, the nine minute ‘8 Prinzessinnen’, acts as a perfect mission statement, with Roscher explaining that she wrote its insistent, driving music “like morse code and then set it in motion, like a musical wheel that keeps stumbling but is unstoppable. Another wheel then materialises and clutches on to it, as if two bands are playing at the same time like clockwork.”
MONIKA ROSCHER BIGBAND | photo by Lukas Diller
Its follow-up, ’Starlight Nightcrash’, unfurls gradually in darkly haunting fashion and is about the beauty of the natural world as well as its frighteningly destructive power. The mangled sounds of a circuit-hacked Casio keyboard flicker through the song even as her band sparkle in lush symphonic colours. A third single, ‘A Taste Of The Apocalypse’, “asks questions suggested by various technological breakthroughs that make it necessary to rethink and perhaps redefine what makes us human,” adds Roscher. “Musically, however, it embraces an optimistic take on our digital-looking future, wide-eyed, full of pathos and with heroic trumpets leading the way!”
Issued just ahead of the album, ‘Firebird’ sounds like pure ecstatic energy, like a flight through a warm summer night, surrounded by exploding colours and beams of light. Led by a propulsive drum beat, layers of sound are built that eventually coalesce into a huge crescendo. Tender verses provide some respite before the pounding, delirious bliss of the chorus crashes back in. It sounds scintillating.
Virtuosos as individuals, as MRB they are a close-knit collective who feed on musical challenges set during recording sessions, while each of their rousing live shows is a celebration of the musical freedom and inspiration they offer each other. A brilliant big band that constantly surprises and reinvents itself, MRB love the adventure and are driven by a hunger for musical symbiosis.
WITCHY ACTIVITIES AND THE MAPLE DEATH
TRACKLISTING
1 8 Prinzessinnen
2 Firebird
3 Witches Brew
The Summoning | Moon Is Melting | The Brew | The Woods |
Dance Of The Sleepy Spirits | Return Of The Witches
4 Creatures Of Dawn
5 Queen Of Spades
6 Starlight Nightcrash
7 A Taste Of The Apocalypse
8 The Leading Expert Of Loneliness
9 Direct Connection
10 Unbewegte Sternenmeere
MONIKA ROSCHER | photo by Emanuel Klempa