Bassist Thomas Kolarczyk was curious about music across genres, from experimental rock to urban jazz, and all the way to ethnic and folk music. Because of this wide interest, it was not difficult for Kolarczyk to find connection to different groups of musicians. Over the years, he has won several prizes from "Jugend jazzt" to the "Jungen Munchen Jazzpreis," at times under his own name and at times as a member of other bands. Kolarczyk's quintet, on this, their debut album, leaves plenty of room for the combination of sprawling improvisations and motifs that do not deny their origin of folk music. In the pieces on this release, the power and wildness of the "free jazz" era and the creative finesse of modern jazz cultivated in all it's details meet the melodic strands of the Balkans and the Orient, which in turn have developed long since into a metropolitan hybrid as a sound language. When the whole is played with the approach of the Thomas Kolarczyk Ensemble, which joins the individual mosaic pieces equally to a whole, then this is music that actually seems a bit more international than that of the Occident.
