Niklas Wandt’s new album is available!

He is a drummer, percussionist, producer, radio journalist and DJ. Niklas Wandt's musical path can be traced to his childhood, signposted by jazz and psychedelia. He has presented WDR 3's Jazz & World programme for several years. A growing interest in electronic music has seen him perform live and record albums with bands like Oracles and Stabil Elite. He has even carved a niche as a DJ in the environs of the Düsseldorfer Salon des Amateurs. In 2018 Niklas Wandt and Wolf Müller released the highly acclaimed Instrumentalmusik von der Mitte der World album (on Growing Bin Records). Wandt also founded the synth-pop project Neuzeitliche Bodenbeläge with Joshua Gottmanns.

Other solo and collaborative works followed in 2019 and 2020. Now, Niklas Wandt is about to release a pretty great album under his name on Bureau B. The full scope of influences gathered and absorbed over the years coalesce on Solar Müsli – all the pieces of the puzzle fall effortlessly into place. This release is not formalism at work. But it is an exhilarating and freely flowing album that started as an exercise in spontaneous percussion and developed into a multidimensional journey, at times both introverted and ebullient. Mere genre tags go out of the window. The listeners will find themselves stopping dead at certain moments, transfixed in wonderment before the ride resumes.

Niklas Wandt on Solar Müsli: "As for so many of us, last year's March abruptly ended a hectic schedule. I'd spent more time on the road than at home the previous year, what with touring and radio productions. The consequences of a return to domestic life were manifold: a considerably easier way of life outside of the music itself, long walks of contemplation, taking in the spectacle in the skies, seeing the light fight its way through thick banks of cloud, a sunset, the grass rustling in the wind. The borders of our world seemed much further away than they were. It was also a year full of tension and conflicts in a far livelier dreamworld than before – all found in the first two tracks. A "complete night" traces an arc from the beginning to the end. This track is a communal journey and a liberating, joyous experience – all in naturally associative lyrical collages that you cannot frame in any specific form. But the spoken passage at the end of Solar Müsli sums it up beautifully – "I have no idea where the journey began, but at least I have found the first pieces of the puzzle."

I believed music ideally needed to be performed live for a long while, perhaps due to my years playing improvised drums. It has to do with the feeling of sharing something no one can repeat, whereas a record holds everything in a dormant state. That never felt quite right to me. But what if you can apply this openness to the musical process in the studio as well? Drums and cymbals are the most intuitive of all instruments. You can also detect a percussionist's approach in other, quite different tools. On Erdtöne, my debut EP (Kryptox, 2020), I improvised one-takes on drums and percussion in my practice room. Solar Müsli began in just the same way. Two summer days in the practice room where a lonely drum takes to a metronome, with nothing more than rough structures in my head. I left in brief wobbles and interruptions (as I did on all of the tracks except for Solar Müsli and Am Rande).

These take lent the pieces a structure that I fleshed out with various analogue synthesizers and drum machines in my living room. The summer of last year brought another new twist to my creative process. In all my collaborations, the final arrangement and production had been mainly in the hands of my respective musical partners. This time I was on my own. Although this is a solo record, I involved lots of friends in its making. Some go way back, including certain musical connections, which I had almost lost entirely. I'd spent time on the road with our old band Oracles in the company of sound engineer Dennis Juengel and violinist Hanitra Wagner. Arranger and conductor Christian Dellacher is a good pal from school days, and we met up last year for the first time in a decade. Nathan Bontrager and Stefan Schönegg on cello and double bass are old compatriots from the improvised scene in Cologne. Sam Irl is the house engineer of my band Neuzeitliche Bodenbeläge.

Thanks to a (government) music grant, the overdubs were completed in December in Cologne, along with marimba and vibraphone tracks recorded in my old music school. The room had barely changed since my lessons there from 1995 to 2009."