When the first memo flew over Lake Ammersee in spring 2021, the pandemic world was still standing still, at least when you look out the window. Accordingly, the path on which Julia Fehenberger, Manuel da Coll and his brother-in-law Oliver da Coll Wrage made their remix contributions for an album by their friend pianist Tom Jahn was already mapped out. Because how else, if not purely digital, should that work in times of social distancing?
“Soothing – External Storage Unit Remix” and “TomFeh03 (Love For A Leaving Lifesaver)” are the names of the two remixes that can be found on Jahn’s double album “Soothing Song For A Fearless Father”. The one wonderfully airy arranged by Oliver da Coll Wrage around the fine enamel in Fehenberger’s voice. And the second as a captivating spoken-word performance of an old poem she penned, again staged by Manuel da Coll and embedded in Jahn’s ethereal textures.
This first collaboration was easy for them, says Julia Fehenberger, who has been with the busy one for a long time labrass banda-Drummer Manuel da Coll and his brother-in-law, ex-Labrassbanda bassist Oliver da Coll Wrage, is friends. So it’s no wonder that this initial spark was followed by a lively digital exchange between the three of them, which quickly became a virtue out of the need for social distancing – and finally even a band called miss made.
Here is Julia Fehenberger, who soon spontaneously recorded text ideas and melodies on tape at the kitchen table and at the piano in every time window that opened up at home near Lake Ammersee between childcare, in order to then constantly refine them. There Oliver da Coll Wrage, who then continued the whole thing on the bass as well as with samples and electronic textures, and Manuel da Coll, who as drummer and producer at home on the west side of the lake provided the fine tuning of the songs.
And so, after months of data transfer and finalization in the Giesinger Katzlbaum Studio, music was finally created that was as catchy as it was rhythmically complex, the finely ramified roots of which lie relatively clearly in the trip-hop of the nineties, which was dragged out with powerful beats – which, on the other hand, was not necessarily planned that way may be.
Hit the nerve of the times
The process of creating the songs felt like a digital form of jamming, says Fehenberger. “Most of it happened spontaneously and in a way hit the nerve of this time for us – this slow-motion-like feeling of standstill between exhaustion and melancholy, but in which a kind of floating euphoria flashed up every now and then.”
If you listen to the eleven songs on “Right On Song” (Trikont), it works very well. Named after the phrase “to be right on song”, which also stands for being in top form beyond the music, the trio, with the help of Evi Keglmaier (violin & viola) and Tom Jahn (keys), unfolds a spectrum of timbres that is made to shine in the most beautiful way with the help of Fehenberger’s jazz and soul-trained voice.
It ranges from the elastic groove spectacle of the opener “For What” to the pitch black stumbled pandemic reflection “Hiding Timing”; from the honeyed romance of “Gimme” to the spherical wobble of “Heads In Clouds”; or from the sinister Portishead-Hommage “Dear Magician” to the melancholic strings “House On Fire” moving towards the unleashing of drums and on to the android psychedelic of “Reinvent Yourself” wobbling dubbed through the club fog.
In der Rote Sonne, Feh are now releasing their debut album, which will be released the next day, for the first time and with an extended band line-up (including Miyaji Mitsuyoshi from Coconami on the electric guitar) onto the stage. They should be right on song.
Feh, Thursday, March 16, 9 p.m., Red sunMaximiliansplatz 5