The stimulation for Jasper van 't Hof's latest project was provided by none other than the European musicians on the last PILI PILI tour: Inspired by the energyladen improvisation of the brass section, he began writing material for a new project invulving a great deal more brass. HOT LIPS is the name of the new formation, and it's almost a big band - at least the team (at heart a sextet) certainly sounds like one. On first hearing, the sound may be a little reminiscent of old PORK PIE dagys: wildly effusive keyboard passages mixed with well-rounded and highly palatable themes in combination with a funkily plucked bass. But the moment the broad harmonies of the brass section come in, it becomes clear that Jasper van 't Hof has invented somthing entirely new here.
With HOTLIPS - in a manner very different from the band PORK PIE, which was characterized by a certain wildness and rhythmic intensity - van 't Hof is looking for a bigger lineup, bigger soundscapes and a more compact lyricism, all of it accompanied by a precise and metrical beat and forceful intensifications of tempo. HOTLIPS certainly allows its excellend musicians time for solos, but van 't Hof's main objective is to put his team's entire sound potential to collective use. There was a brief PORK PIE revival in the mid 1990s, where the musicians ivolved (including Philip Catherine, Charlie Mariano and Don Alias as well as van 't Hof himself) also integrated their global musical experience, especially where Africa was concerened. Now, however, HOT LIPS not only dispenses wiht African musicians but also (with one exception) with World Music aspects altogether. The new band devotes itself entirely to European fusion jazz, but not as we know it from the early 70s. On the cotrary, the style is entirely contemporary, owing as mich to funk rhythms, as it does to minimal music aspects; there are powerful grooves but the music is also dance-like, even reminiscent of chamber music, and - something one encounters again and again in Jasper van 'Hof's compositions - comprises the odd elegiac moment as well.
The HOTLIPS musicians are primarily good old friends from Jasper van 't Hof's musical family: London trombonist Annie Whitehead, a bandleader herself who has toured with PILI PILI on several occasions; the same applies to sax player Tony Lakatos, electric bass player Frank Itt and drummer Marlon Klein, in whose Bielefeld studio several of the HOTLIPS recordings were made, and the highly talented Dutch trumpeter Eric Vloeimans. Danish bassist Bo Stief is a very old friend of van 't Hof - they have played together on differrent occancions since 1980. Trumpeter Christian Kappe, from Münster, Germany, has made a good name for himself with various German fusion bands over the past years, and young trumpeter Axel Schlosser, once a member of the Peter Herbolzheimer Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra (BuJazzO), is now part of the Hesse Radio Big Band.
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