THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE FROM THE STAIRWELL CD / 2xLP / LTD. COLLECTOR'S BOX The long-awaited new album. CD comes in a glossy triple gatefold digipak. LP comes in a glossy heavy gatefold cover. 180g vinyl, 100 pieces on white/red vinyl A/B effect, 100 pieces on white vinyl + black splatter, 300 pieces on black. LTD. COLLECTOR'S BOX is strictly limited to 120 pieces and contains the 2xLP on white/black vinyl A/B effect, the CD, a screenprinted poster, badges, a sticker, and a hardcover book with pictures to all songs. buy cd | vinyl buy mp3 buy merch You can stream four songs of FROM THE STAIRWELL below and more songs from the S/T album further below!

Check out THE MOUNT FUJI DOOMJAZZ CORPORATION, the improv alter ego of TKDE, here!

THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE are a project which has always been tied to films. Films are luxurious because they dispose of all these boring, unimportant, and trivial parts of our lives. This allows them to fully control our sensations, to put us in a very specific mood. Joy and sadness are occasionally OK, endless joy or endless sadness are clinical. But there is one sensation which can be persistent and unconditionally bearable at the same time. In the absence of a better alternative, let's call it "the mood". The mood is what TKDE are aiming at. The mood.

The mood is infinite and illimitable, but not uniform and unique. On "From The Stairwell", TKDE deliver eight new incarnations of the mood. Stairwells have always been intriguing. They appear to unavoidably lead you to your destination, but they only disclose the path bit by bit. What lies far ahead of you and far beyond you is hidden in the shadows. The stairwell could just as well be infinite. You climb up this murky stairwell, passing by many doors. Every door contains a variation of the mood, a short film, a song. You open the first one, "All Is One". The evaporating mist discloses a large and empty room with a barstool in the middle. On the barstool, a chanteuse from the roaring twenties. Her voice starts to trigger vibrations of the ground, the walls start spiralling around her, but she remains untouched in the eye of the storm. Second room, "Giallo". Sly guy, telling smile, nice suit. Walking down the streets in the dusk. The ambience starts to get out of phase, the guy stumbles in horror while blending with the surrounding to a brown soup. Fourth room. "Cocaine". Naked people with pig heads crawl on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. They try to hopelessly suck up the white dust which covers every single piece of this room and is constantly spit out by tubes coming out of the walls. Dissonant sounds accompany the work of this desperate hive. As the people manage to counteract the tubes, fragile melodies start to overpower the dissonances. Sixth room, "Cotard Delusion". Baby morphing into a black fluid morphing into an old man which turns his eyes inwards and finds his inside to be completely empty. The journey up the stairwell, down the stairwell, continues. The pictures fill your head and make you forget where you wanted to go in the first place.

"From The Stairwell" is a surprise and a logical step at the same time. It is a surprise because the songs are far less beat-driven in comparison to TKDE's earlier works, and even contain a few hopeful tints here and there. It is a logical step because in the end each song turns to have a very diverse dramaturgic flow. This could raise the conjecture that TKDE, initially started out to make music for existing and non-existing films, wanted to incorporate the audiovisual impression completely into songs, making the films superfluous. At times, "From The Stairwell" makes you think of 60's soundtracks, but the organic feeling of those is always interwoven with mechanical elements. Altogether, every single of the numerous details present in TKDE's new songs feels to be at the right place and you can either just dive into the mood or pick one of the many aspects and enjoy it on its own - be it Gideon Kiers' beats & fx, Jason Köhnen's bass & piano, Hilary Jeffery's trombone, Charlotte Cegarra's voice & piano, Eelco Bosman's guitar, Nina Hitz' cello, Sarah Anderson's violin, or - appearing as guest musicians - Eiríkur Óli Ólafsson's trumpet and Coen Kaldeway's saxophone & bass clarinet.

THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE S/T CD/2xLP Re-release with completely new artwork and finally available on vinyl! Cd comes in sweet handprinted arigato! cardboard covers. Vinyl comes in thick gatefold covers, vinyl colours: 180g white + blue a/b effect (100 pieces), 180g clear + white & blue splatter (100 pieces), 180g black vinyl (300 pieces). buy cd | vinyl buy mp3 buy merch

Check out THE MOUNT FUJI DOOMJAZZ CORPORATION, the improv alter ego of TKDE, here!

Finally, a re-release of the excellent S/t debut record of THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE – for the first time on vinyl.

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble (TKDE) formed in 2000 as a project to compose new music for existing silent movies. Jason Köhnen and Gideon Kiers, both graduates of the Utrecht School of Arts, combined their audio and visual skills to reinterpret classic movies by F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu) and F. Lang (Metropolis). And that such an intention ends in quality should be clear from the start.

In 2004 UK trombonist Hilary Jeffery and Swiss cellist Nina Hitz joined TKDE to record this self-titled debut album which was released in May 2006. The ensuing tour saw Eelco Bosman and Paris based vocalist Charlotte Cegarra join, making the ensemble a sextet. London based violinist Sadie Anderson joined in 2008 to supply the group with extra power on stage.
Due to the vast possibilities within the band, the sound spectrum of TKDE is really hard to capture within one specific composition. Moreover, the project will lean towards various styles depending on the respective members working together at a given time. A good mix between atmosphere and technique is always the strong basis for a TKDE composition.
Live, TKDE fuse analogue and digital as much as possible. Combining traditional instrumentations (comprising cello, trombone, violin, beats, guitar, bass and vocals) with existing and/or self-developed software, continuously blending and mutating, they create an organic and electronic performance, supported by visuals which add to and interact with the frequencies of said instruments.

“Take a piece of THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA’s cinematic jazz, a dash of THE BROADWAY PROJECT’s dark/noir, a hint of AMON TOBIN’s twisted mutant jazz and a little FREEFORM ARKESTRA orchestral ambience. Throw in a minipinch of DJ SHADOW and MAJOR FORCE WEST, and a good dose of Planet Mu-ism and you’re pretty much there. As you might have understood by now, it’s a very versatile album.” Fans of BOHREN UND DER CLUB OF GORE should definitely be all ears as well. But since this S/t album already is a classic for a lot of people, you might already know it, too.