Lisbon Berlin Quartet, a german and portuguese collaborative group, is presenting their new album Sinister Hypnotization coming out by Clean Feed records. Luís Lopes and the rhythms provided by Christian Lillinger, Robert Landfermann and Rodrigo Pinheiro are good examples of a new generation of European musicians with a rather distinctive understanding of the musical language called “jazz”. They don’t specially care to give a 21st-century content to the jazz format; it just happens they enjoy, and play, different kinds of music, and usually do it crossing boundaries and mixing vocabularies.
Lopes studied jazz but has a blues and rock/punk background and, as such, loves to use riffs and has a special liking for feedback, distortion and electrical textures and noises. To Landfermann and Lillinger, there’s no real incompatibility between hard bop structures, free form improvisation and punk beats. Rodrigo Pinheiro is one of the most prolific piano players arising from the Lisbon scene, and asserts itself as a mix of classical music with jazz and total improvisation or experimental; they use everything possible if it fits and makes sense to them. The result is, truly saying, jazz of the 21st century, but without a program of intentions.

The Lisbon Berlin Quartet is as intuitive and authentic as it can be, always searching for new structures and textures, and that’s what really matters here. That, and the high quality achieved on their two adventure albums as a trio released on Clean Feed Records: Lisbon Berlin Trio (2011) and The Line (2014), and this very new Sinister Hypnotization as a quartet, also by Clean Feed Records.

Due to travel restrictions, Robert Landfermann and Christian Lillinger will not be able to appear on this date. Luís Lopes and Rodrigo Pinheiro will now be joined by Hernâni Faustino on electric bass and João Valinho on drums.