CHRISTIAN PROMMER – Drumlesson Zwei

Cat No: !K7257CD
BARCODE: 730003725524
LABEL: !K7

Some ideas are just so good, they deserve a second chapter. Like Christian Prommer’s Drumlesson Vol. 1 album, released in 2008, which featured instrumental jazz versions of legendary techno and electronic tracks including Derrick May’s Strings of Life, Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express and Josh Wink’s Higher State of Consciousness.

Now the Munich-based drummer, DJ and producer returns with a second volume of inspired electro-organic cover versions. The musical mix remains ambitiously broad, from Carl Craig to Laurent Garnier, from Underground Resistance to Jean-Michel Jarre. Since the first album, the Drumlesson collective has grown from a studio concept to a fully working live band. Christian was also more directly involved in playing drums, piano and percussion alongside guitarist Uwe Karpa, keyboard player Roberto Di Gioia, percussionist Ernst Ströer, bass guitarist Christian Diener and drummer Matteo Scrimali. After the recording sessions, he also worked on each track in his studio, switching roles from live player to electronic producer.

Christian and his band have also applied their open-minded jazz attitude to the cream of European house, techno and electro. The minimalist throb of Groove La Chord by Stockholm’s Aril Brikha is reborn as a futuristic tropical samba. Sleepy Hollow by the Berlin-based Stefan Goldmann becomes a kind of avant-garde film-noir soundtrack. And High Noon is a cool, moody version of an early cut by those Viennese rhythm maestros, Kruder and Dorfmeister. A regular collaborator with Christian, Peter Kruder was involved in mixing both Drumlesson albums.

French music is also well represented, with a lush chamber-jazz reinvention of Laurent Garnier’s club classic Acid Eiffel and an alluring deconstruction of Jean-Michel Jarre’s immortal electro anthem, Oxygène Part IV. ”The Jean-Michel Jarre track is not a club classic but it’s an electronic classic,” Christian explains. “It’s still very popular as it helped to make electronic music a household name so I tried to keep the well-known melody, but also do more of an avant-garde arrangement around it, like a Tortoise tune.”

Bringing the album full circle, Drumlesson Zwei ends with Sandcastles, a sublime instrumental soundscape based on the club smash by Dennis Ferrer and Jerome Sydenham. Jazz meets house, electronic meets organic, Drumlesson Zwei is a testament to music’s limitless potential for inspiration and reinvention.

Drumlesson Zwei is not about narrow labels, fads or genres. Great music lasts forever.

TRACKLIST

1. Sandstorms
2. Groove La Chord
3. Sleepy Hollow
4. Isolated Syncopation
5. Acid Eiffel
6. Distorted Rudiments
7. Oxygène (Part IV)
8. Jaguar ( Part One)
9. Jaguar ( Part Two)
10. Distant Rhythm
11. High Noon
12. Sandcastles

Microsite:
www.christianprommer-drumlessonzwei.com