Aki Himanen (Trumpet, Electronicsj and Aleksi Kinnunen (Drums) are finnish musicians who both have a strong background in jazz and electronic music. For years they’ve been exploring the boundaries where machines and organic instruments can create a real dialogue inspired by generative music techniques and collective improvisation with trumpet, drums and machines.
Now the duo is releasing on Jazz-o-Tech Dawn Drops, which combines techno and jazz music in a sophisticated manner. There are lots of influences from Nordic jazz, but rhythmically the EP owes more to the African based jazz grooves. Synthesizers, drum machines, lyrical trumpet melodies, and organic jazzy beats together form a hypnotic blend full of mental images. The music is dark but hopeful, moody, and organic. It’s very visual and reminds futuristic Scandinavian landscapes where nature and technology are smoothly melting together. Dawn Drops EP is like a peaceful but suspenseful nightly car drive somewhere between the futuristic mountains where dawn is setting and darkness fades away in a slow and beautiful
A club-ready remix of this one comes from Spanish techno artist PEG, an associate of the Dynamic Reflection label who fuses techno, ambient, dark beats and techno old and new into his music. He flips the track into a much more driving and deep techno tune that is designed to get you into a state of hypnosis as it races late into the night on spooky synths and powerful kicks.
Last of all, Munich based artist and musician Lindsey Wang aka Polygonia steps up. She is a master of rhythm and composition and brings this to a haunting and serene techno track laced with ambient mysticism and subtle pads that melt your mind.
This is another high class coming together from the worlds of jazz and techno to form something utterly new and exciting. Jazz-o-Tech is a label that draws on the rich heritage of two of the most visionary and experimental genes in music: jazz and techno. Taking inspiration from the freeform creative nature of those two musical worlds, artists on the label mix tradition with modernity, improvisation with experimentation, and create a new sound known as techno-jazz. Modern music needs to be ambitious. It must aim to deliver a musical message which is one step beyond what has already been heard. It must take you on a new musical journey into unknown dimensions and emotions. That is the Jazz-o-Tech mission.
