The art of sampling is a delicate craft. Honing in on a gem, separating it from its context and flipping its sound to create something new, the sample brings a trace of the past into future creation – making something fresh from a memory. On the debut collaborative project between bassist and producer Petter Eldh and drummer Noah Fürbringer, ‘DRIFT’, the duo perfect their sampling expertise to produce six tracks of self-referential, career-spanning creations that break new ground across jazz, head-nodding hip-hop, frenetic dancefloor beats and textural electronics. “It’s not shying away from nostalgia but rather cherishing those memories through recreating,” Petter Eldh says. “It’s not about making something better, it’s keeping something beautiful and making it more beautiful.”

Acclaimed for his improvisational agility, Berlin-based Swedish bassist Petter Eldh has spent the past two decades exploring the fertile fringes of Europe’s jazz scene, collaborating with the likes of British pianist Kit Downes, Swedish saxophonist Otis Sandsjö and playing as part of the avant-garde group ØKSE, featuring Mette Rasmussen, Val Jeanty and Savannah Harris. His Koma Saxo group, meanwhile, has released four albums embodying the liquid sound of electronics through acoustic instrumentation, and his two Projekt Drums albums blend beatmaking with a roster of rhythmic collaborators including Richard Spaven and Eric Harland.

It was between Projekt Drums albums in 2022 that Petter first met Berlin-based drummer and member of the virtuosic, German Jazz Award-winning Moses Yoofee Trio, Noah Fürbringer. Providing the rhythmic backbone and kinetic energy for MYT’s three releases to date, Noah has become a key anchoring point in the Berlin jazz scene thanks to his ability to effortlessly switch between complex beats and artful accompaniment. “I posted a clip of myself on Instagram playing along to a sample of Petter’s live show and he reached out to say we should get in the studio together,” Noah says. “It all clicked as soon as we met. We became good friends and started to build an instinctive process of sampling tracks or elements and then crafting tunes around that.”

Meeting in Petter’s Prenzlauer Berg studio whenever the pair had time away from tours and other projects, they spent the next four years honing the hip-hop and dancefloor-referencing sounds of ‘DRIFT’. With each track running at under three minutes, the record develops the attention-grabbing quality of a mixtape, condensing the masterful improvisations of the pair’s jazz experience into bitesize yet deeply layered compositions.

Opening number ‘GLOW’ sets the tone for the EP to come, featuring a sample of Petter’s upright piano from his family home in Sweden twinkling over a cacophonic drum beat before settling into a classic, hard-swinging hip-hop groove.

Not just informed by their sampling process, ‘DRIFT’ is equally the product of Petter and Noah’s friendship and the life experiences they both encountered during the years of the record’s making, as well as a reflection of Berlin’s creative ethos. “We both went through a lot over the four years of making this music together and the instrumentation reflects the emotions of those life changes,” Petter says. “I had a serious breakup and plans to leave Berlin but this collaboration was one of the reasons I chose to stay. It opened up new creative avenues and it allowed me to step out of my comfort zone to find a new perspective, which is exactly what the city is about.”

“It’s the most international city in Germany and everything meets here,” Noah adds. “Young people are coming back to jazz in the city and it’s become a music where people can immerse themselves in to forget about the chaos of the wider world. There’s a real openness and curiosity to everyone who makes art here.”

Already sitting on a stack of new music created after ‘DRIFT’, Noah and Petter are setting out on what will surely be a long and fruitful partnership. They also have plans to bring their compositions out of the studio and onto the live stage, both as a duo and as a backing band featuring the network of players they have come to know in cities across Europe. “It would be amazing to constantly bring in new people and to use this project as a bridge to different live sounds,” Petter says. “The music is dense and dancey and we’re excited to keep going and see where it takes us.” It’s material that could surely become a sample for something new, carrying on the never-ending loop of crafting beauty from beauty.