Michel Meis 4tet - Lollipop Moment (2023)

The quartet around the Luxembourg drummer Michel Meis is back with their third opus Lollipop Moment.

The record features three new compositions (Puff Puff Puff, Silberfell and The Madness) embedded in a freely improvised session. The musicians remain Meis’s usual fellows: Alisa Klein on trombone, Cédric Hanriot on piano and Stephan Goldbach on double bass. In contrast, the instrumentation moves towards a more electronic sound with the addition of synthesisers and effects.

While improvisation is the common thread of the album, the new hybrid acoustic and electronic sound enhances the band’s sonic spectrum. In contrast to smooth transitions between these two poles, hard cuts underline the band’s career-spanning explosive, edgy, and slightly provocative character.

Through its diverse moods and complex yet never arbitrary structures, Lollipop Moment offers music that is as elaborate as it is spontaneous, giving jazz a fresh touch by breaking down genre boundaries.

Inspired by Drew Dudley’s definition of a lollipop moment, where someone said or did something that fundamentally made someone else’s life better, Michel Meis wants to touch people with his music and accompany them on their journey.