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Five Moons
Jeff Herr
Label: Challenge Records
Released: 2026
Views: 17
Tracks
Queen’s Land Mercury Dreams The Longest Arrival Dry Your Eyes Cipher Breaker Five Moons Lightning Starwell
Personnel
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Album Description
After a five-year hiatus, Luxembourg-based Jeff Herr Corporation returns with Five Moons, an eight-track album that introduces a new line-up and a reimagined approach to the trio’s sound. Led by drummer, composer and sound designer Jeff Herr, alongside saxophonist Maxime Bender and bassist Pol Belardi, the group brings together contemporary jazz, electronic textures and groove-driven improvisation, exploring the relationship between programmed structures and spontaneous musical interaction.
Founded in 2004, Jeff Herr Corporation has evolved through several formations and musical directions. When Herr relaunched the project in 2025, he wanted to do more than revisit its earlier acoustic sound. Working with Bender on tenor and soprano saxophone and Belardi on bass and synthesizers, he began developing music in which electronic elements would become an integral part of the trio's musical language, rather than simply an additional layer of production.
Much of the material for Five Moons began in Ableton Live, often taking shape around a rhythmic pattern, bass line, loop or electronic fragment. These initial ideas were recorded, manipulated and rearranged before being developed into compositions for the trio. For Herr, the process opened up new possibilities for rhythm, allowing programmed patterns and samples to interact with the physical energy of his acoustic drumming. The aim was to create music in which electronics and live instruments could move naturally between composition, improvisation and experimentation.
A significant part of this development took place during an artistic residency at Neimënster, the Abbaye de Neumünster in Luxembourg, between December 2024 and April 2025. The residency gave the musicians time to explore the material collectively, testing ideas and reshaping arrangements through rehearsal and improvisation. Bender and Belardi brought their own musical personalities to the compositions, transforming Herr's initial sketches into pieces built around the interplay of all three musicians.
Recorded at Holtz Sound in Tuntange, Luxembourg, during December 2025 and January 2026, Five Moons balances carefully constructed electronic material with the unpredictability of live performance. Across eight tracks, lyrical saxophone melodies meet deep bass grooves, atmospheric textures and energetic drumming, with the music shifting between tightly structured passages and more open improvisation. The result draws on the immediacy of a jazz trio while embracing the wider sonic possibilities of electronic production.
The album's title reflects this openness. Rather than following a fixed narrative, Five Moons suggests cycles, transformation and changing perspectives, ideas that echo the band's own evolution. Each piece offers a different musical environment, connected by the trio's shared approach to sound, rhythm and interaction.
With Five Moons, Jeff Herr Corporation enters a new phase of its more than twenty-year history. Bringing together new collaborators, compositional methods and electronic possibilities, the album captures a group willing to rethink its identity while retaining the spontaneity and collective energy at the heart of its music.
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