Blaustart

Blaustart

Urban Mäder: Voice & Accessories

Hans-Peter Pfammatter: Piano & Synthesizers

Silke Strahl: Saxophone

Released on March 1, 2025

Season opening. Everything new. Everything in motion. Me too. From the hundredth thing to the thousandth … and yet I want to write another tip, preferably about something completely new. But there’s no getting around it: my ears keep wanting to listen to one of my favourite CDs from last year.

I know why. Because Blaustart is also a blueprint. Blaustart always has this azure effect on me: I simply let go of all the clutter and let some air in. What’s more, I get into a good mood almost immediately whenever I listen to this CD. That’s why, in my collection, it sits under the category: Emergency / Lifeline / Balm for the Soul.

Most of the time, it’s the banal things that wear me down: coordinating the offspring and dealing with the eternal mess, filling out electronic forms, the printer, or the cat, who once again decides to pick a fight with me, resulting in me either spilling coffee over the computer or stepping on a dead dormouse.

Good grief.

Music, please. Blaustart, please.

I already like the titles. I love that there is suddenly a “Zeitlücke” (“time gap”), an “Aufstandszeichnung” (“insurrection drawing”), “Kostengutsprache mit Verzeihung” (“cost coverage with forgiveness”), “Leere Versprechen” (“empty promises”) and “Da musst du durch” (“you just have to get through it”).

Yes, sometimes you have to get through some unbelievable stuff. You can do it with style, too. You can hear that quite clearly here.

Because Mäder, Pfammatter and Strahl are daring because they have the chops to pull it off. Free fall into the blue? Why not? Why always want to know what’s coming? Let go. Feel what it’s like to surrender to the fall? And when the others are falling too, you can hear them sigh, scream, whoop with joy and come out with the occasional really cool line.

The trio draws the listener in with a fantastic mixture of electronic and acoustic sounds. They rattle, whoosh and ring their souls right out of their bodies and back in threefold. Hans-Peter blends his synthesizer sound world and piano with the voice and saxophone with extraordinary sensitivity. Mäder’s voice provides a sense of security, even as he swallows entire worlds and spits them back out. And that saxophone: shimmering, delicate, emerging from every dimension while always homing in precisely on an inner point of the interplay.

“Let someone tell me what there is besides improvisation!” That’s what it says in the band’s text, and they are speaking straight to my soul.

In fact, if the word cool had a colour, it would be a shade of blue, too. Celeste.

And the three of them are so human. That touches me. And I don’t mean that ironically.

I’m very sensitive to that sort of thing. When good musicians play with such naturalness through the wildest tangles of life, some of the questions I couldn’t even formulate for myself seem to answer themselves.

And then there’s another beautiful theme: how we deal with time. Because rich is the person who takes time. Richer still is the person who passes it on. The trio can stretch out the musical moment so fluidly and playfully that I immediately get the idea of looking at everything a little more calmly or of trying that trick with the corners of the mouth … you know, pulling them upwards on both sides at the same time …

Ah, the fact that there are people who catch little wisps of things and blow their delicate forms through space … that immediately gives me more definition again. I mean, all those stories, the crying and laughter, frustration and despair…when something inside you finds a sound, somehow you remain connected to life …

So: take some time off, start out blue, live into the unknown, look for blue flowers, play, dream.

Right now I’m getting the urge to throw myself headfirst into everything again …

But enough talking. You’ll have to listen to it yourselves.