Schneeweiss & Rosenrot had a great start into 2012: After taking home an award at the renowned Neuer Deutscher Jazzpreis in March, they didn\u2019t rest on their laurels but went straight back into the studio for two months, working on what was to become their third album. According to the band, the new long-player, entitled Pool, has created an even stronger bond between them \u2013 which is hardly surprising: For the first time the four musicians actually worked together on new material, starting each and every new song from scratch like a truly collaborative effort. Their motto: Anything goes. \u201cWriting for the new album, we wanted to not only focus on what we can do in a live situation; instead we wanted to explore all the myriad possibilities a recording studio has to offer. This, however, also meant that some of the songs actually didn\u2019t take on their final shape until we were in the studio, which is something we hadn\u2019t done on previous albums,\u201d Lucia Cadotsch explains. Adds Marc Lohr: \u201cProducing this record allowed us to get even closer, both on a musical and on a personal level.\u201d And the resulting full-length Pool, in turn, sounds even more diverse, more playful \u2013 and more produced. In short: It sounds even more like Schneeweiss & Rosenrot.<\/p>\n
The four band members, originally hailing from Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, first met in 2006 in Copenhagen, where they all shared apartments at some point or lived next door from each other, which ultimately led to forming Schneeweiss & Rosenrot \u2013 and guess what: the official band language was Danish at first. Six years and three albums later, all four band members are based in Berlin. It didn\u2019t take long until vocalist and keyboard player Lucia Cadotsch (Switzerland), Johanna Borchert (Germany; piano\/backing vocals), double-bass player Frans Petter Eldh (Sweden), and Marc Lohr (Luxembourg; drums, electronics) were celebrated as major new talents at various festivals. Their debut album Salt Crusted Dreams came out in 2009, followed by Pretty Frank, released in 2011.<\/p>\n
In Jazz thing, the band\u2019s sophomore effort was described as the kind of jazz music \u201cthat moves beyond the stereotypical and standard categories,\u201d and indeed: stereotypes and standard genre terms aren\u2019t enough when dealing with a band such as Schneeweiss & Rosenrot. \u201cWe all listen to all kinds of music; we\u2019re extremely open to new things and like to bring all these different influences to the table,\u201d Johanna Borchert and Petter Eldh are keen to point out. That\u2019s also the reason why listening to Schneeweis & Rosenrot doesn\u2019t mean you have \u201cjust\u201d piano and drums and bass and vocals; instead, you\u2019ll also discover various synthesizer sounds, electronic effects, samples, all of which help shape a more surprising, shape-shifting and stunningly multifaceted sound.<\/p>\n
Yet, while the band\u2019s soundscapes are all about spontaneity and discovering new musical realms, the lyrics, at least now and then, reveal somewhat darker and more pensive moods, which Lucia Cadotsch nevertheless presents with a twinkle in her eye.<\/p>\n
One of the key inspirations for Pool\u2019s lyrics was animal life, she explains, an obvious example being the song \u201cPros\u00ecte Parasite,\u201d in which Cadotsch sings (in French) about a certain parasitic species called Cordyceps Fungus. \u201cTake a closer look at how animals behave, and you\u2019ll discover amazing things and some behavioral patterns that are actually quite similar to human behavior. I\u2019m also interested in puns and personifications of certain feelings and conditions. There\u2019s one song, for example, in which I\u2019m addressing a feeling of paralysis, but dressed up as a certain Miss Palsy, who just showed up to have party on my face. At the end of the song, I use my weapon to kill the two uninvited guests.\u201d<\/p>\n
A way more commonplace situation triggered the song \u201cWe\u2019re All Loose\u201d; in this case, Johanna Borchert was responsible for the lyrics: \u201cI was in Berlin, and as I got of the train on G\u00f6rlitzer Bahnhof I saw so many empty-looking faces that I instantly felt really sad. Well, so I thought how can I make them smile, and then I just started to sing: \u2018We\u2019re all sad walking down the road.\u2019 In that sense, the song is an attempt at dealing with questions such as \u2018how do we choose to live\u2019 and \u2018what do we want out of life\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The way they manage to make room for such a wide range of mental and emotional states \u2013 and even more musical styles \u2013, and the way they play with the unexpected, using subtle irony and ambiguity, is what ultimately makes Pool their best album yet and indeed an awe-inspiring work of art. Big words, for sure, but certainly no exaggeration: On this new album, Schneeweiss & Rosenrot sound like they have been reborn to become a whole new being. A fact that\u2019s beautifully underlined by the cover artwork, which shows the four of them, each band member lying naked in fetal position, next to each other in translucent eggs. A bold visual statement, it says: We are a band that\u2019s united in becoming a new creature. And the Pool we\u2019ve tapped into is essentially our collective gene pool. After all, creating an album always feels a bit like being pregnant with a baby, Lucia Cadotsch adds. \u201cYou never know for sure how it\u2019s going to look like until it\u2019s finished. Of course you have a feeling, an idea, but you can only fully see and understand it when you\u2019ve really finished it and brought it into the world.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lucia Cadotsch – vocals
\nJohanna Borchert – piano
\nPetter Eldh – bass
\nMarc Lohr – drums, electronics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":264,"template":"","meta":[],"class_list":["post-227","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-world","product_tag-schneeweiss-und-rosenrot","first","instock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}