Legendary Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson observed the immortal truth many moons ago: «When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro». Well, for the many pro’s among us who know that the world has become stranger and stranger with each passing day, the Berlin-based quartet WOBBLE8 has a handy solution in the shape of a compact debut album. So, fear not, this fearless quartet is here to explore the most famous models humanity has invented so far to explain our weird world.
WOBBLE8 features Austrian bandleader, drummer, and composer Valentin Schuster (of the chamberpunkjazz trio Edi Nulz, acrobatic punk quartet Crutches, Boomslang Records and the Bezau Beatz festival), Argentinian baritone sax player Sofia Salvo (of Kuhn Fu), Norwegian bassist-guitarist-vocalist Dan Peter Sundland (of Frank Gratkowski’s Entrainment and Lina Allemano’s Ohrenschmaus), and German synth player Sebastian Pfeifer (of SEXSCHWEISS, who replaced original member Marta Warelis). The quartet recorded its album at Popschutz Studio in Berlin in December 2025.
The music addresses our inherently wobbly universe and cooks a puzzling, genre-binding, cosmic recipe, comprised of a volatile stew of prog-metal, courtesy of Schuster’s aggressive, double-pedal bass drum kicks, and Sundland’s effects-heavy bass, guitar, and growling vocals, Salvo’s free jazz screams and howls, and Pfeifer’s spacious, vintage-sounding synths. Surprisingly, this hyperactive, nervous dish works. All ingredients keep kicking and pushing each other, feeling like being spaghettified by a black hole.
The ever-shifting slide puzzle keeps galloping from doom-metal attack to dramatic, prog-rock flight, to fiery, cathartic free jazz eruptions, moving in and out of place, while embracing instability, complexity, and wonder. Just when you think you have deciphered WOBBLE8 mad cacophony, you realise that you need to listen again and again to their addictive stuff to gather more insight and maybe find out where these wobblies hid the moon. Hopefully, this electrified, overloaded sensory experiment refines the quantum physics theory and may save our poor, woobly universe from the coming apocalypse.
Eyal Hareuveni
Valentin Schuster (drums), Sofia Salvo (baritone saxophone), Sebastian Pfeifer (synthesizers), Dan Peter Sundland (bassVI, voice)
