Austrian band Shake Stew, led by the formidable bassist Lukas Kranzelbinder, release their sixth album ‘Lila’ on 13 October. To say that they’ve been on a roll since their inception in 2016 would be an understatement. With an enviable collection of awards already behind them, this year they were awarded Amadeus Austrian Music Award 2023: no mean feat as it’s the first instrumental act in 20 years to win in the Jazz/World/Blues category since Joe Zawinul won with Faces & Places. The band’s unusual configuration of 2 drummers, 2 bass players and 3 horns remains, as does the line up of Johannes Schleiermacher, Mario Rom and Astrid Wiesinger make up the wind section with Nikolaus Dolp and Herbert Pirker on drums and Lukas Kranzelbinder and Oliver Potratz on bass.
‘Lila’ sees Kranzelbinder fulfill a long-held ambition to work with Viennese producer Marco Kleebauer (Bilderbuch, Sharktank, Leyya). Like Kranzelbinder, he is a key figure in the Austrian music scene and although their musical paths have been very different the collaboration just clicked. On several tracks we hear Kranzelbinder's now familiar multi-layered compositions supplemented by Kleebauer’s sound layers pushing the door wide open to a new musical chapter of Shake Stew, but not at the sacrifice of band’s trademark sound. Another exciting collaboration is that with spoken word artist Precious Nnebedum, who grew up between Nigeria and Austria and features on ‘Not Water But Rest’. Initially recorded with the whole band it was only when Kleebauer began work on it that the idea to include spoken word emerged. Nnebedum was so inspired by the music that she wrote the lyrics overnight on what has become a stand out track on the album.
 
On ‘Shasta Fey’ – one of 3 live tracks – the hypnotic grooves and trance-like passages associated with the band jump to the fore. On a repetitively rippling carpet of drums and guembri, bassist Potratz is given seemingly endless space to fully unfold with his Bass VI (bass instrument, which has 6 strings like the guitar, but is tuned an octave lower and was mainly used in the surf music of the 60s and 70s). The title reflects the strong influence of the film world on Kranzelbinder's music, as Shasta Fey is a character from Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and the track ‘Detroit’ is an homage to a scene in Jim Jarmusch's film Only Lovers Left Alive. Both films have already served as inspiration for several pieces.
 
The title track and first single (out 1 September) ‘Lila’, takes a gentler path showcasing Kranzelbinder's instinct for melody and instrumentation and is the band's shortest – but perhaps also most concise – piece to date. ‘Detroit’ captivates with a dialogue between the kalimba and drums until Kranzelbinder also dives in with his guembri (Moroccan bass lute). The track also forms the transition to a more playful part of the album and the three live tracks, ‘Heat’, ‘Shasta Fey’ and ‘Breathe’. Recorded in a small venue in Vienna last year they capture the excitement and thrill of the band’s now legendary live shows with ‘Breathe’ ending the album with a collective exhale. As Kranzelbinder explains, "when you run a long distance, there is often the recommendation not to stop immediately at the finish, but to go out slowly. This is exactly how I feel about Breathe.”