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Almost seven years after their last release, numerous international tours, a change of drummer and the award for „Best Band" at the first edition of the German Jazz Prize 2021, PHILM, tenor saxophonist and composer Philipp Gropper's band with Elias Stemeseder (piano, synths), Robert Landfermann (double bass), and now Leif Berger (drums), is releasing two new albums on January 27, 2026.
„2024" was named after the year it was created and recorded in Zentrifuge, an old Berlin cinema. "In August that year, the whole band in one room, we were searching for rhythmic mantras" Philipp Gropper explains, „for new, multi-layered rhythms and unfamiliar forms". Catapulted into strange worlds by Gropper's compositions, PHILM is all about the emotional content of these grooves and navigating in them together. PHILM's members' mutual respect for each other's practices, their interpersonal chemistry and the adventurous creative atmosphere in the studio left marks on the sound. PHILM is not about outdoing each other with solos, but about finding a shared musical language, and about creating together, like an interlocking sound machine.
The second album, „2025",was recorded live at Cologne's venue Loft in April 2025. The sound here is darker and more emotional. The two pieces "no words" I and II are good examples, as they deal with feelings of bewilderment and horror in the face of current geopolitical crises, wars and the ongoing destructive role of the global north. Between dissonance and beauty, a wide range of emotions unfolds.
With 2024 and 2025, PHILM are opening a new chapter for themselves and further refining their long-standing and rightly celebrated consequent understanding of jazz and storytelling through music.
