The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble Release New Live Album (Free to Download)

"I Forsee the Dark Ahead, If I Stay' is the first TKDE live album. A compilation of 9 live tracks recorded during the period of 2006 to 2011, from shows in The Netherlands, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain and Poland."

Available starting this Friday (Dec. 16th), you can stream and download on the band's Bandcamp

Short Personal Note & The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble

Determination and time.

News: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble to release new album - From The Stairwell

From TKDE website:

THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE are a project which has always been tied to films. Films are luxurious because they dispose of all these boring, unimportant, and trivial parts of our lives. This allows them to fully control our sensations, to put us in a very specific mood. Joy and sadness are occasionally OK, endless joy or endless sadness are clinical. But there is one sensation which can be persistent and unconditionally bearable at the same time. In the absence of a better alternative, let's call it "the mood". The mood is what TKDE are aiming at. The mood.

The mood is infinite and illimitable, but not uniform and unique. On "From The Stairwell", TKDE deliver eight new incarnations of the mood. Stairwells have always been intriguing. They appear to unavoidably lead you to your destination, but they only disclose the path bit by bit. What lies far ahead of you and far beyond you is hidden in the shadows. The stairwell could just as well be infinite. You climb up this murky stairwell, passing by many doors. Every door contains a variation of the mood, a short film, a song. You open the first one, "All Is One". The evaporating mist discloses a large and empty room with a barstool in the middle. On the barstool, a chanteuse from the roaring twenties. Her voice starts to trigger vibrations of the ground, the walls start spiralling around her, but she remains untouched in the eye of the storm. Second room, "Giallo". Sly guy, telling smile, nice suit. Walking down the streets in the dusk. The ambience starts to get out of phase, the guy stumbles in horror while blending with the surrounding to a brown soup. Fourth room. "Cocaine". Naked people with pig heads crawl on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. They try to hopelessly suck up the white dust which covers every single piece of this room and is constantly spit out by tubes coming out of the walls. Dissonant sounds accompany the work of this desperate hive. As the people manage to counteract the tubes, fragile melodies start to overpower the dissonances. Sixth room, "Cotard Delusion". Baby morphing into a black fluid morphing into an old man which turns his eyes inwards and finds his inside to be completely empty. The journey up the stairwell, down the stairwell, continues. The pictures fill your head and make you forget where you wanted to go in the first place.

"From The Stairwell" is a surprise and a logical step at the same time. It is a surprise because the songs are far less beat-driven in comparison to TKDE's earlier works, and even contain a few hopeful tints here and there. It is a logical step because in the end each song turns to have a very diverse dramaturgic flow. This could raise the conjecture that TKDE, initially started out to make music for existing and non-existing films, wanted to incorporate the audiovisual impression completely into songs, making the films superfluous. At times, "From The Stairwell" makes you think of 60's soundtracks, but the organic feeling of those is always interwoven with mechanical elements. Altogether, every single of the numerous details present in TKDE's new songs feels to be at the right place and you can either just dive into the mood or pick one of the many aspects and enjoy it on its own - be it Gideon Kiers' beats & fx, Jason Kˆhnen's bass & piano, Hilary Jeffery's trombone, Charlotte Cegarra's voice & piano, Eelco Bosman's guitar, Nina Hitz' cello, Sarah Anderson's violin, or - appearing as guest musicians - EirÌkur ”li ”lafsson's trumpet and Coen Kaldeway's saxophone & bass clarinet.


In addition to this check out the new album Anthropomorphic by The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation:

Support a Musical Project: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble have turned fully independent and have decided the fund their 3rd release with funding using Pledge Music (the equivalent to Kickstarter).

Here is their Pledge Music page and the announcement and video from it about their upcoming release and its funding:


The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble : Album Pledge from TheKilimanjaroDarkjazzEnsemble on Vimeo.

"The shift in music (business) culture has been an interesting one to say the least.

We’ve always been some what leftfield in our ideas and music. Trying to develop and focus on new ideas in our music, visuals, live shows and developing the band in its entirity.

We have decided to be fully independent and to finance our new album with funding via Pledge Music.

The reason is basically because without a label there are quite some costs involved for producing an album.

Rehearsals, studio time, equipment, mastering, (pre) production, artwork and probably some other details which we will encounter during the process.

The feedback we got from our fanbase reassured us that all of you fully backed our idea, and this has convinced us that this will be a good move in order to make the best album for the people who enjoy our music.

So, we’d like to thank you already for believing in us, and funding our new album. It makes us feel good that we are being backed by the people who love our music!

Also we would like to further ask your support to spread the news to people who might be interested in this fund.

All the production and promotional costs will be part of this pledge, covering rehearsals, pre-production, studio, mastering, artwork, pressing, etc.

The album will be available digitally (all formats), CD (special packaging), 2xLP and a limited exclusive box edition.

The pledge will also offer new merchandise (shirts, hoodies, stickers, buttons and posters).

Please note that standard shipping costs are costly these days. Therefore pledge prices (especially outside Europe) are a bit more pricey.

We are always open to all feedback, so don’t hesitate to drop us a line at : info@tkde.net

Thanks in believing in us!

TKDE.
"

Dark Ambiances Series - Pt. 2: The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation

We continue our journey into the dark corners of the human mind with The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation.
The alternate identity of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, this project covers similar sinister and eerie territories and is dark sounding. As the bad puts it: "The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation is a live improv jazz/drone/doom sideproject consisting of TKDE members and a host of interchanging guest musicians."
The music is mysterious, evocative, creepy and beautiful.
Their second offering, Succubus from 2009, accompanies the 1969 movie of the same name, by Jess Franco. Said to be a live improvisation recording (while watching the movie), this doesn't sound improvised to me, just showing how spectacular the interplay, tuning and musical conversation between the musicians are.

Here's how they describe the recording of their second album, Succubus:

On the 15th of January 2009, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble gathered at a studio in the Netherlands to shake out the rust before going on tour. One wisely recorded improv session later, these film buffs emerged with a seventy-five minute love-letter to the movie they habitually watched while recording: Jess Franco’s Succubus. Capturing the taboos and temptation of its source-film’s eroticism, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble transformed themselves into The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, trading their past efforts in metal for a greater emphasis on free-form jazz. A Succubus – meaning, a demon that fornicates with human prey – deserves a soundtrack of such alluring menace. With the lead-off track’s deep drones and loose cymbal hits, ‘The Sexy Midnight Torture Show’ doesn’t sound like the taping of an S&M performance at all; in fact, it sounds as if whoever was responsible for recording jetted for the venue’s dark back-alley. Into the shadows, after all, is ultimately where Succubus belongs, amid the gothic gloom of urban and social decay. As the echoed drums of ‘Perverted Pleasure Party’ clatter like rain on trashcans, the violin in ‘Fleeing the Scene’ seems to ricochet across the buildings of an abandoned metropolis. Needless to say, Succubus can illustrate morose bleakness to the extreme. Mercifully, the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation avoids completely bumming us out with a scattered handful of tracks that individually combat this near-impenetrable darkness. ‘Erotic Love Queen’ for example, parts the grisly clouds of its preceding segue with warm bass movements and soaring trombone while album highlight ‘The Admiral’s Game’ incorporates such elements into a visceral build worthy of post-rock’s pioneers. It’s a strategic success; after a few tracks of androgynous drones weigh us down, the collective eases you back with the tender sighs of trombone and muted vocals. Such instruments are as fundamental to the soul of Succubus as they are payoff for us listeners. Although Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation don’t intend for this release to stand as soundtrack to Jess Franco’s 1969 cult favourite, it certainly ebbs and flows with the sympathy necessary to compliment moody cinema. In the case of ‘A Bad Trip’, the soundtrack is purely subconscious, operating on the minimal scale of tense bass and distant brass before ‘A Place for Fantasies’ subtly rises into trombone-squiggles and foggy ambiance. By the record’s last third, there’s little point trying to distinguish this track-by-track; as surely as Succubus was recorded live in one take, it deserves to be heard as such. Pertinent to its muse, this follow-up to the Mutations EP is a tad frightful but wholly encompassing, and while it’s best heard at night, don’t dare play Succubus in the dark. Skeleton Crew Quarterly.

credits

released 01 June 2009 Köhnen : Bass Kiers : Drums Bosman : Guitars Jeffery : Trombone / Oscillators Cegarra : Vocals Anderson : Violin

 

You can stream their release Doomjazz Future Corpses here.
You can stream both albums in their bandcamp.
Stream and listen to music after the Jump

Dark Ambiances Series - Pt. 1: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble

During the next nights, we shall experience dark, somber and mysterious ambiances. We shall dwell in the depressive and forlorn, we will bask in the shadows of hopelessness.

I'll dedicate each post to a different group and their music; each group known for their own take of brooding and melancholic textures and melody.

We open this exhibit of the macabre with the multi-national group The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble.



They started as the duo of Jason Köhnen (bass, guitar) and Gideon Kiers (effects) who composed music for old silent movies. They were joined in 2004 by Hilary Jeffrey (trombone) and Nina Hits (cello) and this lineup recorded the debut self-titled album released in 2006. The lineup expanded further with Eelco Bosman (guitars), Charlotte Cegarra (vocals and various instruments) and Sadie Anderson (violin). In 2009 they released their spectacular album, Here Be Dragons.
Their side project, The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, will featured here soon as well in this series, and so will wait its turn.
Music after the jump.