One of the contenders for jazz album of the year comes from German supergroup WEB WEB – who continue their collaboration with songwriter and producer Max Herre on their fifth album, WEB MAX II – and it is out now on Compost Records.

They first joined forces with Herre in 2021 and released the WEB MAX LP. This time, more complex jazz compositions, cinematic motifs and West African polyrhythms have been styled using a wider range of instruments.

“We don’t want to tread water,” says Max Herre. “Our mantra this time was to let the inside guide us and freely explore and sound out the musical spectrum that fascinates Roberto (Di Gioia) and me when it comes to instrumental music and connected us for many years.”

Classical music instruments, such as the bassoon or bass clarinet, combine with sounds of the musical-technical revolution of the 1970s, such as a Mellotron, the first sampler in music history operated with tapes (6th Dimension, Ólobo) or an original EMS Synthi Hi-Fly (Look Beyond The Sun).

Roberto adds: “With Max, I’m able to move through the most diverse styles like with no-one else and still always coming up with something original. He has the gift of transforming small musical sketches into a grand narrative. He’s a visionary, music with him always becomes more imperative, never arbitrary.”

While the list of guest artists on WEB MAX was a line-up of international renown, with Ethio-jazz legend Mulatu Astatke, Strata East founder Charles Tolliver, the exceptional New York harpist Brandee Younger and featuring a voice recording by Yusef Lateef, the focus this time is on the closer musical circle – with the exception of Los Angeles-born percussionist and producer Carlos Gabriel Niño.

In addition to the core line-up of the group – around Roberto (keys), Tony Lakatos (sax, flute), Christian von Kaphengst (bass) and Peter Gall (drums) playing on WEB MAX II – the featured artists are mainly musicians from Di Gioia’s Munich environment: the vibraphonist Marja Burchard of the legendary krautrock band Embryo (The Source Of All Things), flutist Marcio Tubino (Perennial Journey), bass clarinetist Johannes Enders (Testimony) and percussionist Biboul Darouiche (The Source Of All Things).

Max Herre says: “While our idea on the last record was to move out of Munich, connecting with international icons of spiritual and Ethio-jazz, we wanted to switch the perspective this time and focus the view from the outer world to the music that has been going around the world out of Munich since the early 1970s.”

Roberto adds: “Not least through my almost 20-year collaboration with Klaus Doldinger, I became aware of the immense influence that progressive jazz and krautrock from Germany had on the development of instrumental music worldwide. Besides Passport, it was bands like Embryo, Amon Düül and Popol Vuh that established Munich’s reputation as a centre of progressive music internationally.”

With songwriter and rap poet Sèkou Neblett, whose spoken words in the first song Perennial Journey thematically set the tone for the album, and distinctive soul queen Joy Denalane (Look Beyond The Sun), WEB MAX II also reunites the founding members of the legendary German hip-hop group FREUNDESKREIS in a completely new context.

Whereas the first WEB MAX album (check a performance video here) with its often modal, mantric themes and expressive solos, was heavily loaded by the spirit of the late 1960s musical pioneers, the new album plays completely detached from traditional genre boundaries.

WEB MAX II is probably the most diverse distillation of the band’s spiritual jazz roots in its seven years of existence.

Check it on Bandcamp here.