Raz Ohara / Andi Otto Trio

At the end of the ’90s on every Wednesday, Raz Ohara sat on a sofa at Berlin’s legendary Club Maria at Ostbahnhof and played dance music. Not alone, but with a quartet of musicians, including Chilly Gonzales, with whom he played a mixture of hip-hop and beat-heavy soul. From this musical groundwork laid on the club sofa, careers developed whose beginnings can be heard on the then leading Berlin label Kitty Yo. Here, Raz Ohara released one of the best songwriter-with-subtle-electronic albums of the new millennium with “The Last Legend.” in 2001. Since then, the Swiss Dane from Berlin has manifested himself on further albums as an ingenious melody inventor, with an eclectic style ranging from club music to jazz. Six years after his last album, “Tyrants” is now released on Denature/!K7 Music, which Ohara recorded with composer and cellist Lih Qun Wong: a shamanistic sound palette that ranges from soothing ambient sounds to contemporary classical and jazz, and will be performed live by a quartet. Before, sound artist and Pingipung label co-founder Andi Otto plays pieces from his oeuvre of eight-albums, ranging from electronically charged Krautrock to jazz. His live performances with his fello, a cello enhanced with sensors, bassist Sebastian Kokus and superdrummer Manuel Chittka, are magic.