• Artist: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
• Links: the ensemble's myspace page and jason's bong-ra pages

Description

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble’s form of mutant jazz, slithers and slides...delicately painful. Each song, a little story of heartache, hope and perseverance, seemlessly fusing analogue and digital.
Soundtracks to non-existing movies, inspired by the worlds of The Quay Brothers, Hieronymus Bosch, Picasso, Goya, Murnau and Lang.

Jason Kohnen (aka Bong-Ra) and Gideon Kiers started TKDE around the turn of the century, creating new soundtracks to existing silent movies such as Murnau’s Nosferatu and Lang’s Metropolis. Both graduates of the School of Arts and majoring in audiovisuals and multimedia, the audio/visual concept developed into creating ‘visual’ music supported by existing film fragments to intensify the audio.
The Quay Brothers became a big inspiration for their debut album. Their surreal world combined many weird and wonderful aspects to strengthen TKDE’s sound.
Hilary Jeffrey on trombone joined in 2004, having performed with artists such as Nick Bullen and Patrick Pulsinger, also mastering trombone improvisation. Nina Hitz on cello and Ed Loman on guitar and Lica on vocal improvs form the TKDE live quintet or sextet, with Kiers providing drums, sequencing and visuals and Kohnen the bass, synths and sequencing.