Radio Citizen - The Night & The City (2LP) [Sonar Kollektiv]

Format: 2x12" in gatefold sleeve + download card.
CAT: SK310LP

Perhaps Sonar Kollektiv got lucky, or perhaps it’s a logical consequence that Munich native Niko Schabel and his project Radio Citizen are now releasing their new album on the label that embodies exactly the sound Schabel has championed for years. The first two LPs (“Berlin Serengeti” and “Hope And Despair”) were released on San Francisco label Ubiquity Recordings after Quantic heard Radio Citizen's music and sent a promotional CD to Ubiquity's A&R department.

Five years after that San Francisco excursion, Schabel now returns with his group to the refuge of his hometown. “The Night & The City” is an album custom-made for Sonar Kollektiv: a genre-bending mix that deploys live instruments on equal terms with samples, creating a highly explosive combination of Latin percussion, funk, dub pop, melancholic folk-tinged soul, afrobeat, ethno-jazz, bossa nova, hip hop, and blaxploitation soundtracks.
Schabel is a true "musician's musician": he can play everything from woodwinds to keyboards and percussion, and he masters the Akai MPC sampler like few others. Added to this is his ability to work with all kinds of musicians and, from multiple influences, individual pieces, and genre styles, mold a coherent entity greater than the sum of its parts.

To open this thirteen-station journey of “The Night & The City” is the slightly somber “Shores,” featuring the extraordinary Afro-European jazz singer Natalie Greffel and drummer Matthias Gmelin. Schabel himself handles the MPC, plays piano, and provides percussion. Then the mood turns even darker with the instrumental “Clouds,” accompanied by Antonis Anissegos on piano. The entire album moves between melancholy and nostalgia. In “Radio Days,” Greffel devoutly laments: “search around for higher ground, before I drown in the waves that been pulling me down.” It sounds as if Portishead and Tricky spent a day together on the stormy Atlantic coast. “Rise” also revolves around the sea, but speaks of ceasing to lament and that “freedom will come your way.” The album embraces the typical Bristol sound without falling into trip hop or big beat. Niko Schabel and his collaborators are too devoted to jazz to take that path and, with tracks like “Trip,” “Sleep,” or “Schatten,” offer the perfect soundtrack for an imaginary urban thriller. The key difference from other musically impeccable and stylistically confident groups that practice their own jazz is Radio Citizen's unparalleled use of samples. In “Phone,” from crackling vinyl and numerous strange sounds, Schabel builds a twisted sound wall over which Greffel's lyrics glide almost angelically. The singer, with her warm and moving voice, is practically present throughout “The Night & The City.” Only on “Near And Far” does she briefly yield the microphone to Abiodun Oyewole while accompanying the hypnotic rhythm with a triangle.

This is definitely not the typical pleasant record to leave playing in the background without paying attention. Unless you deliberately want to create a claustrophobic, threatening, and yet absorbing atmosphere. Music for after midnight. Music for urban neurotics with a lot of groove.