Bokoya is a relatively new group out of Cologne, Germany, consisting of Darius Heid, Ferdinand Schwarz, Leon Raum, and Lucy Liebe. With their first album, Introducing, released in 2019, they described themselves as a hip hop/jazz band, in which “four musicians play together as if they grew up inside a drum machine.” Essentially, what this means is that you have four musicians who all studied jazz in music school, but who also have a deep love of hip hop and electronic music. They made their debut for Melting Pot Music last year with the release of their album, Hausensession. Now they’ve teamed up with fellow Cologne artist Gianni Brezzo to release a new album, Minari.

It makes sense for these two acts to come together, as Gianni Brezzo (the studio project of Marvin Horsch) is not only from the same city, but also interested in the intersection of jazz, hip hop, and soul, as evident in the release of recent albums like Soundscapes Vol. 1 – Music for Harlequins, which came out earlier this year on Jakarta Records. For this project, we have Raum on drums, Heid on Rhodes/keyboards, Lucy Liebe on guitars and bass, Schwarz on trumpet and synths, and Gianni Brezzo on guitars, samplers, and effects. The album was recorded over the course of three days, as the group jammed and improvised around song sketches and beats that they each brought to the table. There was some editing and arranging after the fact, but no overdubs. The resulting session is something that you really need to set aside some time for so you can listen to it all the way through one-on-one. That’s because there is so much happening over the course of the album, but a lot of it is subtle and builds slowly. The overall sound fluctuates between ambient, post-rock, jazz, electronic, and hip hop, often finding some interesting areas where two or more of these genres intersect. There aren’t a lot of “big” moments, and there certainly aren’t any pop songs to be found on the album, but there is a lot of experimentation, pushing of musical boundaries, and just celebration of collaboration and the creative process. That’s one of the most enjoyable parts of listening to an album like Minari – just hearing the excitement coming through the music as these artists thrive on the musical give and take between each other, creating this sound that none of them could have made on their own.

Minari is a fantastic musical experiment gone right. Bokoya and Gianni Brezzo seamed destined to be collaborators, and now that it’s finally here, the result is just as good, if not better, than expected. They throw out the rule books and push each other to bring together all the different styles and genres that they grew up on, whether that be jazz, hip hop, or anything else that might make sense in the moment. The result is an album that you really have to sit with and listen to all the way through a few times to really appreciate all that they accomplished.