Hotel Florida, the debut album by trombonist Andreas Tschopp and baritone saxophonist Matthias Tschopp's Swiss sextet Sparks & Tides, delivers an enthralling, improvisation-laced set of electro-acoustic soundscapes Yin and yang. Black and white. Earth and sky. In nature and culture dualities are often inextricably linked, and the music of Sparks & Tides embodies the way that polar impulses and approaches can manifest as a deeply integrated whole.
The first collaboration co-led by brothers Andreas Tschopp (trombone) and Matthias Tschopp (baritone saxophone), the Swiss sextet makes a subtly enthralling debut with Hotel Florida, an album marked by lapidary textures, extended melodies, and finely calibrated production. Dense and spacious, electric and unplugged, carefully composed and improvised in the studio, the music of Sparks & Tides is as dichotomous as the band's name. More than a moniker, it's an encompassing conceptual framework that flows from the personalities of the brothers. "Matthias is sparks," Andreas says, "and I am tides. At the moment we're both interested in finding ways to combine the acoustic sound of our wind instruments with electric/electronic sound sources. So this was the overarching sonic idea of the ensemble."
Sparks & Tides also refers to the flow of their music, which unfurls in unhurried waves until suddenly surging with quicksilver flurries. Cinematic and full of intriguing passages, it's music for unsettled dreams. The majority of the seven tracks run at least eight minutes, and the music evolves with narrative force that keys on an accretion of sonic details. "There are lots of little things like drum machine tracks, bass drones, live sampling of the horns by the keyboardist and using the sounds as samples, and also some modular synth processing of the saxophone," Andreas says. The group brings together some of the most creative figures on the small, intertwined and fervently inventive Swiss jazz scene. A member of the R&B-influenced electro-duo True, drummer Rico Baumann is as deeply versed in hip hop, pop and electronic music as he is jazz and improvised music, which is the terrain he inhabits with Andreas in the collective jazz quintet Le Rex.