Monika Roscher Bigband - Witchy Activities and the Maple Death (2023)

Here's an interesting take on the big band format – Roscher's outfit, formed in Munich in 2011, mix the rich tonal palette of a jazz orchestra with avant-garde symphonic intensity, dissonance with swing, and acoustics with electronics. The drumming is fierce, the horns blare with real power and sense of purpose, but this lot can swing, too, and they know when to leaven the intensity with periods of reflection and even tenderness.

Epic opener, the nine-minute ‘8 Prinzessinnen’, is an appropiate ‘mission statement’ for MRBB as a unit and this album as a whole; Roscher explains that, “I wrote it like morse code and then set it in motion, like a musical wheel that stumbles but is unstoppable. Another wheel then materialises and clutches on to it, as if two bands are playing at the same time like clockwork.”

‘A Taste Of The Apocalypse’, meanwhile, “asks questions suggested by technological breakthroughs that make it necessary to rethink and perhaps redefine what makes us human.” Despite its doomy tone and title, it's an optimistic take on our increasingly digital future.

Roscher's engaging, Björkish vocals are the icing on this well-recorded and beautifully-packaged piece of boundary bashing.