Swiss brass band LE REX are on the Move!
The firebrand quintet RELEASES VIDEO from its BeJazz Winterfestival 2019 performance of
"Ballad for an Optimist",
a tune from
their NEW ALBUM,
– ESCAPE OF THE FIRE ANTS –
out now on
and
plans a FALL 2019 TOUR of
SOUTH AFRICA & NORTHERN EUROPE
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LE REX
ESCAPE OF THE FIRE ANTS
click to listen to an album track:
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LE REX - "Ballad for an Optimist"
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NEW STUDIO ALBUM ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS
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The renegade Swiss ensemble
LE REX
reinvents brass groove music with the
improvisation-laced
ESCAPE OF THE FIRE ANTS,
beautiful and fiercely creative music for strange times
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Escape of the Fire Ants announces the arrival of
LE REX
as an international force:
street smart & road-tested, ferociously grooving & lyrically charged,
a new millennium jazz brass band infused with
indie rock energy & attitude
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Genre: Jazz, Brass Band
Release Date: April 5, 2019
Label: Cuneiform Records
Cat. #: Rune 464
Format: CD, Digital Download
UPC: 045775 046426
Press Release Download (PDF)
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Harry Lime, the charming but dastardly anti-hero in the classic 1949 film noir The Third Man, famously dissed Switzerland saying "they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." The renegade Swiss quintet Le Rex isn't making up for lost time, but there's an urgency and creative ferocity to their music that would make Lime reconsider his unfair denigration. Featuring four expert horn players and drums, the band is a rising force on the European music scene, with an irresistibly grooving sound honed on the street and designed for maximum impact in clubs and concert halls.
Released on Cuneiform Records, Le Rex's fourth album Escape of the Fire Ants is the band's most confident and cohesive, marked by consistently compelling compositions, careening melodies and thick, lapidary harmonies. It's cosmopolitan music drawing on far-flung influences and connections to Chicago, Belgrade, Cape Town, New Orleans, and Lagos. Rather than flaunting an eclectic palette, Le Rex transmutes its source material into seamless original works reflecting the group's singular collection of personalities. Featuring German-born alto saxophonist Benedikt Reising, tenor saxophonist Marc Stucki, trombonist Andreas Tschopp, tuba player extraordinaire Marc Unternährer, and drummer Rico Baumann, Le Rex reflects the fundamental strength that flows from musicians who've put in the time to forge deep ties on and off the bandstand.
"We always play without charts on stage, and for this recording we did the same thing," says Stucki, who has studied with New York heavyweights Ellery Eskelin and Tim Berne. "We took two days every month to learn the music, and played small gigs to really get the tunes in shape."
All of the members are successful and sought-after players, working in a wide array of settings. Tschopp's Escape of the Fire Ants evidences the band's deepening ties to South Africa, where several members have formed a band with some of the country's best jazz musicians. The album opens with the episodic title track, a piece that sets the agenda with its intricate construction. Moving from steeplechase melodic lines and high-velocity call-and-response figures centering on the trombonist's gorgeous upper register work to a rumbling unaccompanied passage and back to the full band at jagged speed, the unpredictable Fire Ants are not to be trifled with.
Stucki's "Alimentation Générale" opens like a lilting, sing-song ballad but with Baumann's entry the piece adds one layer of groove after another as two rhythmic cycles continually circle back to the melody. With a particularly ecstatic tenor solo by Stucki the tune brings to mind Abdullah Ibrahim in a particularly manic mood, revealing the group's powerful connection to the South African scene.
While Le Rex is best known for thrilling performances at breakneck tempos, the band is equally capable of delivering balladic beauty. Unternährer's anthem "Smoking Flowers" highlights the way the players can step into any role, as the tuba takes the lead. "It really makes sense in this band," Unternährer says. "Sometimes I'm the bass, and sometimes another horn carries the low end. This makes it flexible and more interesting."
"When I compose," Stucki adds, "I like to hear the instruments in extreme ranges, with the tuba and trombone playing high. I like to play the bass lines sometimes. It sounds different, and gives the band a different kind of power."
Stucki's "Harry Stamper Saves the Day" is a riff-based tune inspired by the kind of heavy swing emanating from drummer Joey Baron's Baron Downwith Ellery Eskelin (the title references Bruce Willis's character in the 1998 apocalyptic thriller Armageddon). From swaggering to unabashed beauty to antic heroics, the brief but lyrically distilled "Elliot's Theme" is sandwiched between "Harry Stamper" and the microgrooving "Bandumeh Landing," an impressive tryptic of Stucki tunes.
Reising offers contrasting sonorities with "The Funding," a crunching Talking Heads-meets-Zeppelin piece, and "Glow," a luminous fanfare built on a supple and unadorned melody. In another crafty example of Le Rex's sleight of hand, Tschopp's "Ballad For an Optimist," isn't really a ballad. While it starts with a lovely trombone statement, before long it turns into a joyous dance party, so it does deliver on the optimism. Closing with Reising's "Der Knochige Dürre," Le Rex offers an unsettling narrative that keys on a squealing free improv flight by Stucki. It's a completely different mood and feel than anything that's come before, and a reminder that this is a band that keeps listeners guessing.
In many ways Escape of the Fire Ants announces the arrival of Le Rex as an international force. The band first came together in 2009, united by common musical interests and a love of busking, where the band honed new compositions and techniques through rigorous trial and error. Reflecting the group's commitment to mobility, 2010's debut release Le Corse and its critically hailed 2012 follow up Ascona (both on Unit Records) were recorded with transportable gear on specifically chosen locations on Corsica and Switzerland (the group borrowed their band name Le Rex from an abandoned movie theater they found on the French island).
With the band's debut release on Cuneiform, 2015's Wild Man, Le Rex branched out, inspired by a well-received tour across the United States. Writing and honing material in Chicago, they worked closely with veteran sound engineer Griffin Rodriguez, who has documented many of the city's most eloquent improvisers as well as rock-oriented bands like Beirut and his own Icy Demons. For Escape of the Fire Ants, the band found an ideal situation working with recording engineer Julian Fehlmann at Studio Mécanique in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
"We really tried to find a studio that's not a jazz studio, with more of an indie rock aesthetic," says Baumann, who as Le Rex's rhythmic architect makes sure that the center holds, until it's time to let it fly apart.
The band's enviable cohesion is both musical and social, a dynamic that flows from "quite a special a group of friends, which is not something you have in all bands," Baumann says. "We have this common sense of humor that translates to the music. Playing on the street helped us develop that. We realized on the street you have to be entertaining, which led to players moving around a lot on stage. It's not only a visual thing. It's a sonic thing too. If the horns move away from the drums, it changes the arrangement."
Street smart and road-tested, ferociously grooving and lyrically charged, intricately arranged and spontaneously generated, Le Rex's music contains multitudes. With Escape of the Fire Ants, the band is on the march.
PROMOTIONAL TRACK //
If you'd like to share music from this release with your readers/listeners, please feel free to use this track:
"Escape of the Fire Ants" @SoundCloud / @Bandcamp / @YouTube
WEBSITE //
https://lerexmusic.ch
http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/LeRex.html
DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE + BIO INFORMATION + LINER NOTES:
Press Release Download (PDF)
PRE-ORDER LINKS //
Bandcamp
HIGH-RES PROMO PHOTOS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST //
Please credit photographer: Bastien Bron
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Le Rex Photo credit: Bastien Bron
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LE REX CONCERT CALENDAR: 2019
SWITZERLAND
August 17 - PROGR - Bern, Switzerland
SOUTH AFRICA TOUR
October 5 - Norval Foundation - Cape Town, South Africa
December 1 - B-Flat - Berlin, Germany
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What the Press is saying about LE REX's new release:
Le Rex Escape of the Fire Ants Cuneiform Records 2019
"Imagine the place where a groove-based brass band would meet up with angular European free improv music and Switzerland is as good as any. This quintet features alto and tenor saxophonists, trombone, tuba and the fully swinging and funky drums of Rico Baumann blazing through a set of a dozen songs captured live off the floor. The variety of moods evoked ranges from the pensive Smoking Flowers to the noir-esque Harry Stamper Saves the Day or honking title track. No doubt this is a seriously fierce live unit."
– Stuart Derdeyn, Vancouver Sun
“Thanks in large part to the popularity of the Dirty Dozen, the brass-band sound has become as formulaic as it is popular. It’s almost a postmodern version of Dixieland.... If you want to be inventive, the thinking seems to go, why not just get a pianist and an upright bass?
Fortunately, that sort of thinking seems not to have reached Switzerland, where the five-piece brass band Le Rex manages to make the brass-band sound seem not only fresh but downright daring... theirs isn’t classic brass-band lineup. There’s no trumpet..which shifts the timbral balance and puts the saxophones in a more dominant role, and Marc Unternahrer plays tuba...
Though the writing on Escape of the Fire Ants is intricate and inventive... the improvisation is equally impressive. ...the musical rapport they’ve developed is deep.... Clearly, it’s good to be Le Rex.”
– J.D. Considine, Jazz Times
“[4/5 stars] ...the fire ant is one of the most destructive living beings on the planet... the unstoppable way they behave as invaders...motivated...the title of this fourth disc.
The group... see themselves as a mature street band, eagerly evoking the legacy of the “marching bands” of yesteryear and blending it with other universes, from Chicago jazz (not immune to the AACM universe) to “indie” rock.
... the band tried to preserve the freshness and spontaneity of the street stops, taking their links further to places and traditions as diverse as those of Chicago and New Orleans, but also Belgrade and Cape Town. ... A disc aimed at the mind and the body...”
– Antonio Branco, The Jazz Club Center, 2013
“Le Rex is an up and coming Swiss jazz quintet with an interesting lineup of reeds, brass, and drums... This may put you in the mind of a New Orleans marching group, and that is a strand of their DNA, but they run the length and breadth of jazz leaning into progressive and free sounds as well. ...an exciting performance with a memorable melody and well structured arrangements and playing. Overall, this was a very enjoyable album by a band that bears watching. There is a fine consistency in the quality of their playing, creating music of substance...”
– Tim Niland, Music and More
"There aren’t many horns/drums jazz outfits outside of the New Orleans area. ...it’s not a common configuration in far-flung places. Which makes the Swiss quintet Le Rex somewhat unique, especially for European-based jazz ensembles. ...the 69-minute Escape of the Fire Ants is enthusiastic, an often-heady balance of jazz with global influences which range from the Crescent City to Chicago, and from South Africa to Serbia. The 12 originals...include plenty of rhythmic positivism, call-and-response horns, memorable melodies and unpredictable moments.
...anyone who is attracted to jazz which moves outside the lines should give Le Rex some solid consideration. 4 stars."
– Doug Simpson, Audiophile Audition
“The Washington DC based label Cuneiform has championed avant-garde jazz, prog-rock and generally “difficult” music for over 27 years. Unusually for an American label it also includes a lot of European music...they are back now with a fine set of new releases including this...from Swiss band Le Rex.
....This is very danceable jazz with echoes of marching bands... all the instruments take their share up front as is often the case in a chordless band. ...
This is a band with a great sense of fun. Ideally you would want to see them on an open stage...or...club with room to dance... it would be great to see them here in the UK.
...this album will hopefully form part of a revival in the fortunes of Cuneiform, one of the great independent record labels.”
– Peter Slavid, London Jazz News
“There’s a strong brass driven groove to the music... There are ballads too, and intricate arrangements which still leave room for solos.
This is a band with a great sense of fun. Ideally you would want to see them on an open stage in the sunshine, or in a busy club with room to dance... but it would be great to see them in the UK.
...this album will hopefully form part of a revival in the fortunes of Cuneiform, one of the great independent record labels.”
– Peter Slavid, Tay News
“The Cuneiform continent still germinates prodigies. Another furrow, another path of experimentation opens new possible evolutions for a panorama that unites Europe and the United States under the unique, amazing and bizarre hat of the Swiss band Le Rex project.
... this disc features a continuous hybridization. The strong taste for... Jazz tradition of the great brass ensembles of Chicago or New Orleans is grafted onto the more unstable and markedly expressionist Central European...
A very distinctive line-up...allows the creation of composite melodic textures, sometimes daring or schizophrenic....
Le Rex composes... crystalline visions... The piece that opens and gives the title to the album is a crooked, caustic vision of a fugue... ...ants running away from danger. The imaginative power of the piece is really strong: the alternating rhythmic scan receives a nervous swarming of wind instruments that are produced in a sort of police-style pursuit. The ability to construct symbolic and almost onomatopoeic sounds is truly remarkable.”
– Egidio Marullo, The New Noise [Google translate]
“... this combo from Switzerland... produces music that makes one wonder about the mathematics of an odd tempo while eliciting a strange urge to tap the foot....they design clear-cut melodies, intertwining them within a thoroughly comprehensible counterpoint redolent of too many influences to list.
...The risk, for every ensemble whose expression revolves around wind instruments, is an excessive homogeneity in terms of general sonority. Le Rex overcome the dangers of ho-humness through the very approach to the performance, which is spirited to say the least. ...they often record pieces in public areas: the “erudite busker” method pays dividends.
... the group will have you struggling to place this album in a definite genre...take Le Rex for what they are: brilliant composers and instrumentalists offering a wholehearted bravura...”
– Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
“Each release of Cuneiform Records is able to reserve some surprises and dismantle any prejudice that may precede listening, in full coherence with the philosophy of the founder and currently one-man band of the label Steven Feigenbaum, a tireless researcher of music on the border between jazz, rock and other unconventional languages. Take for example the Swiss Le Rex and their “Escape of the Fire Ants”, fourth release and second for the Silver Spring company... In the twelve tracks, alongside the magnetic grooves built by the interlocking games among the wind instruments...on the solid rhythmic base of drums and tubas...influences of African musical culture appear...swing...odd time signatures...danceworthiness... And, along with these episodes of more marked rhythm, some lyric passages, in which the quintet turns into a small orchestra rich in colors, nuances and sophisticated dialogues... All conducted with great naturalness and spontaneity, as if going from a street parade to a swampy concert hall was the most natural thing in the world... They move, and we can only try to follow them, hypnotized by rhythms and bewitched by the melodies of a decidedly unpredictable brass band.”
– Andrea Baroni, Tracce di Jazz [Google translate]
“Le Rex... sounds unusual, interesting and exciting at the same time. For many years, the American label Cuneiform stands for unusual, experimental listening experiences, making this connection logical again.”
– Kristian Selm, Betreutes Proggen [Google translate]
“[5/5 stars] Who says that [brass] band jazz can’t groove? Swiss ensemble Le Rex certainly do that and more on...Escape of the Fire Ants, a fiery, engaging, and thrilling collection of songs featuring brass, reeds, and percussion... Starting off with the upbeat 8-minute title track, Le Rex bust out the grooves in a big way, the wispy saxophones of Benedikt Reising & Marc Stucki snaking around some muscular lines from trombonist Andreas Tschopp and tuba player Marc Unternahrer, all the while drummer Rico Maumann flails away underneath it all. Fantastic stuff!
...There’s more atmospheric stuff too... but whether Le Rex are burning it up or laying down some refined, smoky lounge jazz, the results are always sensational. Five guys making the sounds of ten, Le Rex have hit a home run here...”
– Pete Pardo, Sea of Tranquility
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Le Rex Photo credit: Bastien Bron
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Le Rex photo credit: Bastien Bron
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Le Rex Photo Credit: Bastien Bron
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ABOUT
Cuneiform Records is internationally recognized as one of the world's most respected, musically significant and longstanding record labels devoted to avant garde/ art music. Since its founding by Steve Feigenbaum in 1984, it has released over 450 cutting edge albums by established icons of jazz, rock and electronic music and also young rising stars, with a roster that's included artists such as Wadada Leo Smith, Robert Wyatt, John Surman, Soft Machine, Richard Pinhas/ Heldon, David Borden/ Mother Mallard Portable Masterpiece Company, The Claudia Quintet, Rob Mazurek, Henry Kaiser, Chris McGregor & the Brotherhood of Breath, The Ed Palermo Big Band, Mujician, Empirical, Anthony Pirog, Bent Knee and many many more. A longstanding - indeed, a pioneering - advocate of emerging/ hybrid/ post-genre musics, the Cuneiform label is one of the global champions of Rock in Opposition/ Chamber Rock/ post classical/ avant progressive music, having released such bands as Present, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Thinking Plague, Far Corner, & more. It is also widely acclaimed for avant/ progressive jazz/ post-jazz releases, including words by by Thumbscrew (Mary Halvorson/ Michael Formanek/ Tomas Fujiwara), Raoul Björkenheim, Pixel, Schnellertollermeier, Le Rex, and others. Its jazz and other releases often appear on Best of Year and Top Ten lists worldwide, and its release of Wadada Leo Smith's 2016 America's National Parks won DownBeat Magazine's Jazz Album of the Year award. At the close of 2017, Cuneiform Records went on hiatus for six months before re-emerging to release two discs by Thumbscrew that would then figure prominently on 2018's Best of Year lists. Operating in a new, streamlined format by Feigenbaum, without in-house promo or other staff, the label continues to release several high-quality new albums a year in various digital and physical formats.
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