This new NooPop Records LP drops Muriel Grossmann into the heart of Tallinn’s jazz underground with Estonian master Tõnu Naissoo for a single‑day studio encounter that lives and dies by the first take. Recorded on 28 November 2025 and built entirely from in‑the‑moment improvisation, the album catches a pan‑European ensemble breathing as one organism. Grossmann’s flute and soprano and tenor saxophones float and cry over Naissoo’s Rhodes and Moog Source, with Abel Boquera’s organ providing a glowing, Hammond‑rich halo, while Radomir Milojkovic’s guitar, Uros Stamenkovic’s drums and Kristjan Jõemägi’s percussion keep the ground constantly shifting. The result is spiritual and cosmic jazz in the classic sense - heady and hypnotic, but rooted in bodily pulse and shared risk. From the first bar, the music moves in slow, tidal surges rather than fixed forms.
Modal vamps blossom into long, spiralling arcs, drums and percussion knitting together cyclical grooves that recall both late‑60s spiritual jazz and the more contemporary trance‑leaning side of Grossmann’s own work. Naissoo’s Rhodes chords flicker like streetlights through fog; his Moog lines rise and fall in shimmering glissandi, pulling the music toward kosmische space even as Boquera’s organ keeps one foot in the church. Grossmann answers with lines that sing more than they solo - incantatory motifs on flute, keening cries on soprano, smoky, prayer‑like phrases on tenor - occasionally punctuated by the small, bright punctuation of egg shaker, tingsha and bells. Milojkovic’s guitar stays just on the right side of combustion, dropping in flares of fire that cut through the haze without disrupting its flow. The only exception to this rule of pure spontaneity is “Haapsalu,” a composed piece by Naissoo that functions like a lighthouse in the set. Its melodic contour and harmonic frame give the band a different kind of focus: here, Grossmann traces the theme with devotional clarity before the ensemble gently unpicks it, stretching and reharmonising until written structure dissolves back into collective improvisation.
The track pays quiet homage to the Estonian landscape and to Naissoo’s long presence in it, while affirming the deep rapport between the visiting and local musicians. Everywhere else, form is discovered rather than imposed - sections emerge when a single rhythmic figure catches everyone’s ear, or when a Moog drone invites the horns to rise into a shared, wordless chorus. The album’s physical form underlines its intention as both object and experience. Two carefully curated vinyl editions invite different points of entry: a limited purple pressing of 200 copies, available exclusively at Uperkuut Record Store, and a classic black run of 700 for wider circulation. The music’s raw immediacy is framed by Peeter Viisimaa’s cover art “Uprooted,” whose imagery mirrors the record’s themes of displacement, re‑rooting and the invisible threads linking distant scenes. Recorded, mixed and mastered in Tallinn by Peeter Salmela, the sound keeps the room in the picture - cymbal wash, air around the organ, the close presence of breath through reeds - while allowing every detail of the interplay to remain clear. Behind the scenes, producer Allan Matsov and NooPop shape the project less as a “feature” date and more as a document of encounter.
