Review: Monika Roscher Bigband – Witchy Activities And The Maple Death (2023)

Witchy Activities And The Maple Death is the third studio album by Monika Roscher Bigband.

Monika Roscher from Germany studied jazz guitar and composition at the Munich Music Academy. She founded the Monika Roscher Bigband as part of her thesis in 2012. The band released its first album Failure in Wonderland the same year. Monika Roscher Bigband was, as the name suggests, built around a large big band style line-up. However, the band did not play typical big band jazz, but Roscher drew influences for her compositions from many directions besides jazz. His music is clearly influenced not only by the many different genres of jazz and progressive rock, but also by pop and electronica. The result often sounds, if not downright avant-garde, then at least relatively futuristic. It’s certainly not yesterday’s stale jazz.

It took a whopping seven years between Witchy Activities And The Maple Death and the band’s previous album Of Monsters and Birds. In the intervening years, Roscher has composed a lot of music for various theatre productions and has been a visiting professor of composition at the Music Institute of the University of Applied Sciences in Osnabrück.

Monika Roscher. Photo: Emanuel Klempa

The line-up is massive again on this third album. There are twenty musicians and, alongside Roscher’s electric guitar, there are plenty of wind instruments, from trombones to flutes and various saxophones. Various electronic effects and sequencing add a modern touch. The sound of Witchy Activities And The Maple Death is at times cinematically orchestral. The atmosphere is often menacing if not oppressive. I wouldn’t call Roscher’s music dark, but it is sombre and rather heavy. The themes of the compositions are nicely distributed among the various instruments, but especially the winds are given plenty of space. There are solos here and there, but for the most part it’s all about tight ensemble playing. Although the music has some jazz overtones, the songs feel very strictly composed and improvisation can be heard only occasionally here and there.

Read also: Review: PoiL/Ueda – s/t (2023)

The album opens with perhaps its finest composition, the nine-minute ”8 Prinzessinnen”. The song begins with menacingly pounding staccato rhythms that briefly recall Gustav Holst’s composition ”Mars, bringer of war” from his famous orchestral series ”Planets”. After a rhythmic intro, there’s a brief art pause followed by playfully lilting sequences accompanied by Rorscher’s heavily electronically processed vocals. Soon the rhythmic grinding resumes and the song is more or less carried to the end by morse code-like snapping rhythms (with some delicious polyrhythmic sections), sharply hitting fans here and there and Rorscher’s robotic vocals. Fortunately, the song is occasionally stripped of most of its effects, bringing life and variety to the whole. Despite the German title of the song, Rorscher sings in English and the same is repeated in the other songs. Halfway through the composition, we hear a rumbling solo on baritone saxophone and later the trombone also solos effectively.

Eight princesses lost control
felt like gods
oh how they glowed
keep on feeding the black hole
entropy has grown

Next up, ”Firebird” is a slightly more relaxed track. Opening with a tasty sawing cello riff and a perky keyboard ostinato, ”Firebird” features a bravely menacing brass theme and pleasantly showcases Roscher’s natural vocal tone stripped of effects. At least for the most part. And now you can hear a hint of a German accent in the song which is solely charming. This reminds me of Dagmar Krause, perhaps also because the style of the song has a hint of cabaret, but overall Roscher’s voice sounds more like Björk. However, Roscher’s voice is more conventional than either of the two comparators I have highlighted. Beautiful and convincing enough, but perhaps the album’s song melodies are not its strongest asset.

The third composition on the album is the stunning six-movement suite ”Witches Brew”, which lasts almost 13 minutes. The title could be thought of as a reference to Miles Davis’s groundbreaking jazz-rock album Bitches Brew, but the piece reminds me more of Frank Zappa’s compositions for large ensembles from the early 70s. Everything is, however, bent to Roscher’s own style. And Roscher’s style at the moment seems to be largely defined by rhythms that roll mechanically over the top in irregular time signatures. There are also some excellent wind instrumental passages that bow towards the Middle East, which also help to distinguish the work from both Davis and Zappa. Amidst all the furious turmoil, a light lyrical section has been included, starting with a flute solo and ending with a wandering piano. The last five minutes are again rhythmically chugging along, although the action is sometimes abruptly interrupted. At the end the music roars frenetically and massively, reminding me of the crazy circus sounds of King Crimson on Lizard. ”Witches Brew” is great progressive math-jazz on a grand scale!

The fourth track ”Creatures Of Dawn” features some nice double bass playing combined with again sharply striking electronic-sounding modern rhythms. ”Creatures Of Dawn” is perhaps the most jazzy offering on the album and feels like it has more improvised moments than average.

Lue myös

After ”Creatures Of Dawn” we’re about halfway through and it feels like the album takes a slightly more song-oriented direction at this point. Roscher’s vocals take on a more central role (and are not so much electronically effected) and the arrangements are no longer quite as intricate, but the compositions could even be described as ”song-like”. I personally feel that the first half of the album is clearly stronger than the second. Not that there is anything really wrong with the second half of the album and there are still some great individual sections, but it just doesn’t manage to surprise like the great first half.

Although ”A Taste Of The Apocalypse” is quite an exciting combination of powerful electric guitars and swing forced into a modern rhythm world (but fear not; this still doesn’t sound like Diablo Swing Orchestra!). The song even has a rather catchy chorus! If there had been a single from the album it would definitely have been called ”A Taste Of The Apocalypse”.

In any case, the 64-minute album feels a bit too long. A little condensation would have done the album good. Personally, I could have done without at least the song ”The Leading Expert Of Loneliness” which remains rather uninteresting.

Despite its overlong length, Witchy Activities And The Maple Death, a wide-ranging genre-bender, is a respectable achievement and by far the strongest Monika Roscher Bigband album to date. Even though Roscher’s music is built from many familiar ingredients, it still feels like we’re on the verge of something completely new. It seems amazing that music so far from the mainstream is possible with such a big line-up in 2023. Monika Roscher has made the impossible possible and I really hope that she will continue to do so many times in the future.

Best songs: ’8 Princesses’, ’Firebird’, ’Witches Brew’, ’A Taste Of The Apocalypse’

Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Read also: Review: Mary Halvorson – Amaryllis (2022)

Tracks

  1. 8 Prinzessinnen (9:04)
  2. Firebird (4:53)
  3. Witches Brew: The Summoning (3:09)/Moon Is Melting (1:37)/The Brew (0:18)/ The Woods (3:07)/ Dance Of The Sleepy Spirits (1:51)/ Return Of The Witches (2:30),
  4. Creatures Of Dawn (7:32)
  5. Queen Of Spades (4:29)
  6. Starlight Nightcrash (5:23)
  7. A Taste Of The Apocalypse (5:21)
  8. The Leading Expert Of Loneliness (4:05)
  9. Direct Connection (6:12)
  10. Unbewegte Sternenmeere (4:46)

Musicians

Felix Blum: trumpet Angela Avetisyan: trumpet Vincent Eberle: trumpet John-Dennis Renken: trumpet Felix Ecke: trumpet Alistair Duncan: trombone Christoph Müller: trombone Christine Müller: trombone Jakob Grimm: trombone Lukas Bamesreiter: trombone Julian Schunter: alto trombone Steffen Dix: alto/soprano Jan Kiesewetter: alto saxophone, soprano saxophone Jasmin Gundermann: tenor saxophone, flute, didgeridoo Michael Schreiber: tenor saxophone, flute, didgeridoo Sebastian Nagler: baritone saxophone, bass clarinet Heiko Liszta: baritone saxophone, bass clarinet Hannes Dieterle: electronics Tahpir: electronics Alex Vičar: electronics Tom Friedrich: drums Ferdinand Roscher: bass guitar Josef Reßle: piano Monika Roscher: guitar, vocals

Producers: Monika Roscher & Tahp
Label: Zenna Records

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