Home » Jazz Musicians » Simon Spiess Discography

Helio

Buy Album

Request an album review

Simon Spiess

Label: Unit Records
Released: 2025
Views: 21

Tracks

Facing The Tiger; Towards Sun; Malcolm B; Amager Strand; Blues 75; Family Karma; Lumbago; Adhān; Fly My Nine.

Personnel

Album Description

Helio lets us take off so high that it becomes difficult to land again. Four exceptional musicians, Simon Spiess on tenor saxophone, Malcolm Braff on piano, Bänz Oester on double bass and Samuel Dühsler on drums, fly through the styles of modern jazz in nine freely fluctuating songs. In their arrangements, improvisations and tricks, they take up influences from hard bop to free jazz and contemporary jazz with professional ease and radical openness

We know the musicians from constellations such as The Rainmakers, Simon Spiess Quiet Tree or BraffOesterRohrer. The original compositions on Helio are by Simon Spiess and Bänz Oester and are already familiar from previous albums, but appear in a new light in this line-up.
The first track, “Facing The Tiger”, describes the context of the recording session quite well. It was not without its challenges, but it shows what a supergroup we are dealing with here. During the two-day recording session in the auditorium of the SRF studio in Basel, two of the musicians were in poor health. Simon Spiess, the saxophonist, even had a fever and briefly fainted during the sound check. But Spiess and his colleagues belong to the category of musicians who give their all at the decisive moment and allow art to emerge from the peculiar mixture of a moment.

Music is therapy. So this album is not about contemplation and thus awakens a musicality that makes it a lively, exciting and creative testimony. At times, Spiess presents himself as an anti-saxophonist, leaving the voice to the pianist, Malcolm Braff, who once again proves to be a rhythmic super talent. The album's tension rises feverishly. After the first, still slightly dreamy minor blues piece, “Towards Sun” brings a dance-like dynamic to the session with African rhythms; “Malcolm B” increases the intensity with modal improvisations à la Coltrane, which reaches its climax with “Blues 75” over a whole tone scale. The very modern “Family Karma”, in the jazz style of the current New York scene, glides along in harmonic heights. At the end, “Fly My Nine” lands in relaxed elegance. Its harmony sequences come from the classic “Fly Me To The Moon” by Frank Sinatra, over which the double bass player, Bänz Oester, developed his own melodies.

Helio creates an exhilarating flight through modern jazz traditions. With ease, it conveys the feeling that everything is open, possible at any time and always with a touch of ecstasy. – Luise Wolf

Album uploaded by Ludovico Granvassu