BEATS II is the fourth album of the Berlin-based trio of vibes player Christopher Dell, drummer Christian Lillinger and double bass player Jonas Westergaard (DLW), and is an extension of DLW’s work on BEATS (Plaist, 2021), and offers a series of musical exercises and fragments structured into minimal entities that are then worked through, in processes of iteration and reconfiguration. BEATS II is presented as a cut-up, purposefully making use of sharp cuts between each piece, and even though these pieces have been recorded in one flow, the pieces are meant to be conceived of as individual collages, within the tradition of sampling. The album was recorded in a longer process in DLW’s sonic laboratory, the Paul Robeson Studios in Berlin in 2022, adding a few pieces at c-quadrat Studio, Berlin and at Salao Brazil in Coimbra, Portugal, all in 2022.

BEATS II is comprised of twenty short «Elements» pieces, all titles add names of colors, vary between a few seconds to a few minutes, and all juggle with multi-perspectivity and multi-dimensionality of the beat. DLW colors the vertical and horizontal grid of each beat and its infinite variance, constructing, shaping and deconstructing the beats in real-time. The colors represent the variety of multiple audible relationships of tonal architecture and their respective sound qualities. The diagrammatic work on the structures was enforced in an intense post-production process by transient forms and hyperreality.

Like the previous album of DLW, BEATS II offers a cerebral and methodical analysis of the architecture and syntax of beats, that are part of the jazz, contemporary music, free improvisation, or even hip-hop languages. It is an uncompromising experience, tangible, hyperrealist and quite addictive. Like BEATS, it sounds like the high-brow club music of the future.

Eyal Hareuveni

Christopher Dell (vibraphone), Christian Lillinger (drums), Jonas Westergaard (double bass)