Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917145526
Releasedate: 24-01-25
- Through Niemandsland (No man's land) to creative maturity: Debut of a drummer and composer
- Intelligent, complex and very personal: the first album by the drummer from Berlin
Niemandsland (trans: “No man's land") is not just the title of this album. Matthias Meyer also named his band as such: Matthias Meyer's Niemandsland. The term clearly has a deeper meaning for the drummer, composer, and bandleader from Berlin. It has become a key word for his musical self-discovery.
This goes back to the early corona period with its restrictions, which also and to a particularly large extent affected many creative artists. Shortly before the pandemic, Matthias Meyer had moved from Hanover to Berlin to complete the next stages of his development in the vicinity of the renowned Jazz Institute Berlin. Within a few months, he found himself in a kind of no man's land, a seemingly unreal stage of forced standstill and isolation, somewhere between emptiness and hope. It was an experience with a cathartic effect. He laid the foundation for his further creative path in that phase, in esthetic terms as well as with a view to the self-confidence to pursue his emerging musical vision.
"Niemandsland" is Matthias Meyer's first own album. The international quintet (Larsen is Danish and Braylovskiy Russian) is his first own group. This seems amazing given the maturity of the compositions and arrangements, the density of the interplay as well as the collective spirit and individual class. One reason is certainly the freshly won, purposefully implemented artistic self-image of the bandleader. The close connection between the band members is just as important. The five found each other in the Jazz Institute, played in different constellations and finally worked out Meyer's pieces together until they were recorded.
The drummer made the decision early and very consciously for the instrumentation with two saxophones. Like so much of his work, this also has very personal reasons from his background. Meyer's first instrument was the saxophone, and he still owns a tenor saxophone. "Even after I had been a drummer for a long time, I continued playing it quite seriously at the same time and still had saxophone lessons at the university. I have always found that it can help me in my playing the drums. As a drummer, I am very interested in establishing an intensive connection to music; this is not as clear for the drums as for other instruments. One of my great role models on the saxophone is Sonny Rollins. His way of phrasing works just as well on drums.”
The title of the two-part album opener seems almost programmatic: Becoming. The personal influence continues in various tracks. "I often have a concrete starting point," Meyer explained. The Thought Of Dying, for example, arose from an overwhelming feeling of weltschmerz: " ... when you deal with your own finiteness, and how suddenly everything can be over. It was out of this feeling that I sat down at the piano." The Choral der Schlaflosen (trans: “Chorale of the Sleepless"), an empathetic implementation of what affected persons go through and can be traced back to a specific case in Meyer's family. "That's why this piece is so blatant. It starts with a kind of sleep chorale and then describes these continuous loops when you try to find sleep and your body does not allow it. The longer this goes on, the more of a horror trip it becomes.”
He attributes the fact that he refers so concretely to the autobiographical to his other great musical love: rock music, whether prog or indie rock. “Rock songs are easier to grasp. I love it when I feel understood when listening to certain pieces. I feel better when there is another person who feels the same way." Jazz is more abstract. "But you can get an idea of what is behind it through the titles of my pieces and perhaps have a different feeling when listening to them."
In addition, there are compositions that were inspired by certain people. Marc is a tribute to the German-British bassist and composer Marc Muellbauer. "He is the best jazz teacher whom I got to know in my career," Meyer praised the experienced Berliner of choice, bassist and composer/arranger. He helped him decisively through the corona period. And pointed him out, among other things, the compositional intelligence of the pianist Marc (!) Copland, who influenced the intro to the piece. Clayton's Labyrinth is a tribute to the American pianist George Clayton and his inspiring ability to combine simplicity and complexity, which is also an ideal for the composer Matthias Meyer.
Meyer, who comes from Hildesheim and studied music and politics in Hanover before turning his attention completely to music, considers Berlin to be the current center of life. However, he has been living in Brooklyn, NY, since the fall of 2023 and is studying at the City College of New York, supported by a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship. His return is planned for May 2025. Some of the bandmates have also moved temporarily to other cities. However, Matthias Meyer's Niemandsland will soon come together again, of course, to present the clever, atmospherically dense, emotionally permeated pieces of the leader at concerts.