Adolf Plays The Jazz – 'Low Life': Multifaceted music!

Time to dive into the sounds of jazz music (and not only)! The Adolf Plays The Jazz give us a wonderful album. The band from Athens released the record titled 'Low Life', which has elements from many different styles of music.

Impoverishment, the dismantling of the welfare state, disappointment, anger, violence, femicides — they're all in there, one way or another, in the songs of Low Life

The Adolf Plays The Jazz they return with 10 small urban fiction stories that try to capture the effect that the decade-long economic-social crisis, along with the viral one that followed, had on the psyche of the people who happened to find themselves in this country. Using as their vehicle the noise their amplifiers produce, the pounding of the drums and their voices (voice, saxophone, keys), they try to dress the defeats, the failures, the confusion and the anger of these people in sound. 

The sound of Adolf Plays The Jazz in the year 2022 retains the Swans and Sonic Youth references that they had incorporated into their previous album Tinder (2015), and although the vocals now seem to be quite a bit more front and centre in the compositions, the structures still keep that post-rock logic and sometimes bring to mind Unwound: repeating motifs that build into guitar crescendos and noisy, multilayered outbursts.

The heroes featured in his stories have nothing left to lose.

The record is complete in every sense. Beyond the wonderful music, ‘Low Life‘ also contains stories with everyday heroes. Their lives have been crushed. They lie broken beneath the tracks of the capitalist machine. Victims of this barbarity that's presented as the only alternative. They can't lose. They've already lost. And yet they're forced to fight even more battles.

All this from a band with huge musical experience

The Adolf Plays The Jazz carry a 22-year journey of exploring electric noise, wandering through post-rock, noise, shoegaze and post-punk paths. After their first EPs in 2005, Cognac Or Brandy and Muzzle The Birds, they released their first album titled Art Brokolo in 2006. That first period, heavy with post-rock flavor, wraps up with the more electronic Melt EP (2007), their 2nd album, Day 4 | Urban Fiction (2007) and the Stealth EP (2008). Then, with Dirty Waters (2009) they wade into wilder waters and 3 years later they'll record Form Follows Function (2012), followed by quite a few live shows all over the country. With Tinder in 2015 they steer their sound through a shoegaze/drone filter with noise flourishes. 

In the spring of 2022 they finally release their new, 6th album, titled Low Life | We Can't Lose. We Already Have Lost with the band keeping its image-driven, cinematic sound and, through post-rock and post-punk compositions, crafting small stories that try to capture the impact of the economic, socio-political, and also the recent viral crisis, on people's psyches.

The band's current lineup includes Νεφέλη Πίσχου on vocals, Βασίλης Μπέκας and Νίκος Λάμπρου on guitars, Νίκος Ζέρης on bass, Πάνος Παπαστεργίου on drums, Άγγελος Μιχαλόπουλος on saxophone, Ηρακλής Χιονίδης on samples, loops, visuals, and Πέτρος Ψηφίος on keys. 

A one-of-a-kind release

The Low Life is out on transparent 180g vinyl via Blackspin Records (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) and Primitve Music (Facebook) while the cover features an untitled work by the great visual artist Νίκος Κεσσανλής, which is in fact almost unknown to the general public since it's held in a private collection. Along with the vinyl there will also be a cd that includes the extended edition of the album with an extra 15 minutes of music. 

The inserts of the vinyls will also differ from one another, as Adolf Plays The Jazz, in their effort to bring out even more facets of the above concept, invited well-known visual artists and photographers to take part in this endeavor, granting permission for their works to be used. The visual artists who answered the call were: Γιώργος Ρόρρης, Τζουλιάνο Καγκλής, Νίκος Βαβάτσης, Γιάννης Sugahtank Ρουμπάνης, Βιβή Παπαδημητρίου, Έλενα Χασαλέυρη, Έλλη Γρίβα, Ευάγγελος Κωνσταντέλος, Χριστίνα Παπατόλη as well as the photographers: Κώστας Μασσέρας, Alex Coitus, Ισίδωρος Σιδέρης, Βασιλική Σκοπέλου and Βασίλης Γκορόγιας making every single vinyl even more special. 

Alongside that there will also be a Limited Version of the album which will also include a 40-page book. In it you'll find the works of the above artists as well as texts from Ντ. Χάντερ, Μάνος Ραγιάδης, Γιάννης Ζελιαναίος, Κώστας Κώτσιας, Κώστας Βαβουρανάκης, Βασίλης Μπέκας but of course also the lyrics of the tracks. This way we unravel the world of Low Life even further, while the introduction is penned by Δημήτρης Ιωάννου. This limited edition will come out in only 100 copies.

In conclusion

‘Low Life’ is an oasis for my ears! One more proof that Greece has plenty of musical talent and the will to create something new, something different. Adolf Plays The Jazz generously give us the chance to live along new musical paths. Their music can open up new horizons. So much so, that the scene from the first Matrix movie with the blue and the red pill came to my mind! That's ultimately what Adolf offer! A way for the fairy tale to continue. So, red it is! And let's see how big the rabbit hole is!