Like missing an open goal from three metres out, it’s almost impossible not to like this in-between thing of a festival and a label. Because something is happening at XJazz! in Berlin – by people who like to dream, or at least have dreamed. Everybody’s here, a gathering of all the ghosts of the moment – first and foremost Moses Yofee and Szabi Bognár, the Jazz Act of the Year Live, who some of you may know as Àbáse. It may sound a bit like an ethno-meadow festival, but that’s how it is. Synths are a necessity. Anyone going to XJazz! won’t be expecting standard jazz anyway. In the name of the zeitgeist, the conventions of cool jazz are still being flouted. And sung. Belted out, of course. It’s XJazz, after all, even more so on Entangled Grounds – even if they want to plant a “celebration of identity, innovation, resilience and interconnectedness” in our ears, because, well, pathos, that’s nice too! Besides, you don’t have to love everything about XJazz! But it really is an impossible feat… yes, impossible not to like it.
Nels Cline
Consentrik Quartet
Blue Note