CD: We are doing well

We are doing well. At first, that's a pretty broad-shouldered statement - especially in these times. But, as always, it depends on the context and the sender. And that's Joo Kraus here. A musician who prefers to dissolve genre boundaries and style labels and makes music the way he lives: free and feeling. So it is quite possible that the album has a few extra dimensions. (Spoiler: Yes it does.)

It's been four years since Joo Kraus hinted at where he is musically going with the album JooJazz: From his home planet Jazz, he goes on ever more extensive voyages of discovery to play with falling stars from other galaxies beyond any crossover orthodoxy - they are called now soul, funk, pop, latin or electro. The music that Joo brought back from these trips was already an ear-opening event on JooJazz. But We Are Doing Well opens the horizon even further: In the 10 songs he simply lets go of all the category lines, abandons himself to the flow - and maybe finds a new home because he wasn't looking for it: unlimited playfulness, virtuoso outlawed and unintentionally profound . Welcome to Jootopia.

We Are Doing Well comes in a pretty good mood the first time you listen to it - yes, we're damn good here: with those old-school funky beats and riffs, this feather-light intonation trumpet that is so virtuoso that it no longer needs to prove it these freestyled, half rapped and half sung vocals, and with arrangements that sound as if they just happened between free association, experimental laboratory and music-historical fundus.

All of this is clearly and decidedly non-commercial - but at the same time immensely entertaining and catchy. How is that possible? “Great freedom,” says Joo simply. And adds: "The songs have become even more free this time because we care even less whether it is played on some radio or otherwise does not fit into any format."

We - as always, have been his fellow musicians for 16 years and at the same time best friends: drummer Torsten Krill, who is also responsible for production, recording, mixing and mastering, double bass player Veit Hübner and pianist Ralf Schmid. Joo Kraus wears the biggest hat himself - trumpet and vocals are just as much on his cap as guitar and some keyboard parts as well as text and composition. The band was also very much in the boat here: “With some pieces I only had a few notes at first, and then the song was created in the studio as an old-school band. When we play together like that, it gets really electric, and something happens that goes beyond the four of us, "says Joo.

What goes beyond that, is perhaps what lifts We Are Doing Well above the good-humored front: Every song has its own dynamic, arouses imaginations and leads to quite strange places. With "Count to 4" we go full throttle into the hippie-speedjazz-wah-wah wonderland - with Frank Zappa as co-driver and 70s prog rock on the radio. “Elvis in Paris”, on the other hand, is like a stroll through Toontown - the houses crooked, the streets crooked, life colorful and rather weird. And that is just the beginning of the sightseeing tour through Jootopia: With “Space Glider” we finally leave everything fixed and certain. Oriental-colored melody fragments flow through us, forgotten dreams emerge along the way, perhaps such a pilgrimage into the subconscious starts ... are we really doing well?

Here and now and listening to the album: But yes! After the urban-subterranean meandering “Jootopia” there is a deep, peaceful exhalation with “Love” - warm and melancholy interpreted by Fola Dada.

And finally the title-giving song: "We Are doing well": Okay, that is actually a statement - also musically. Starts cool, then spreads surprisingly and spans several decades and moods in four minutes. The message is as ambiguous as the sound: "Sure, on the one hand we're doing really well - but many people, including myself, also tend to withdraw into their own little world, even though the hurricane has long been raging out there." Or maybe not? ”Joo's question remains unanswered in the room. Nothing is safe anyway. Except maybe: as long as we can listen to music like the one on We Are doing welL, we are in any case much, much better.