For al.so, space is the place. The exciting new quartet of Berlin and London’s most creative improvisers delivers a debut EP ‘portunes’ that luxuriates in the spacious rural landscape in which it was created and the intuitive freedom found between a first-time meeting of musicians. “This project is the record of four of us coming together and delving into emotions and atmospherics without a clear goal,” al.so keyboardist Moses Yoofee says. “We were exploring space rather than locking anything into a rhythmic or grid structure. All of it is the product of being in the same room together, being free to follow where the music takes us.”

First brought together as part of a curated opening lineup for the 2022 edition of Berlin’s XJAZZ Festival, al.so is German Jazz Prize-winning co-founder of the Moses Yoofee Trio, Moses Yoofee, harpist, Floating Points-collaborator and co-founder of jazz trio Flur, Miriam Adefris, Berlin saxophonist and member of underground collective Sonic Interventions, Marius Max, and modular synthesiser expert and collaborator with Philip Glass and Patti Smith, Robert Henriques. Realising their common musical language and capacity for freeform improvised explorations following their show at Berlin’s Emmauskirche, the quartet decamped to Robert’s family home in Gloucestershire, England in October of the same year to experiment on record.

“None of us knew each other before the Berlin show but we all had so much fun we thought we should go somewhere and see if we could record some material without any pressures or expectations,” Robert says. “We decided to head to the quiet village in Gloucestershire where I have a small, DIY studio and we spent four days setting up a crazy amount of gear and putting down ideas. Being in nature, without the time constraints of the city, really informed what came out, as well as the act of all getting to know each other, which was reflected in the music too.”

Jamming instinctual ideas without a rhythm section, the group was free to explore beatless soundscaping and textural sonics informed as much by the autumnal British landscape as by the analogue gear and equipment each musician had brought with them. The result is a beguiling body of work that references Floating Points’ electronic scoring as much as Philip Glass’ evocative minimalism and the spiritual jazz melodics of Alice Coltrane. Across the EP’s five tracks, each composition confounds expectations, from the wistful opening keys phrases and glimpsed vocalisations of ‘the twig’ that soon give way to an earthy, droning bass paired with the enigmatic plucking on Adefris’ harp to the plaintive saxophone lines of ‘radial’ that are punctuated by the wonky melodics of distorted strings, and the rhythmic tape hiss that lends beat structure to the dampened harp strings of ‘as it tilts’. Through each song, al.so creates ambience that refuses to fade into background music but rather demands attention through the surprising twists and turns of its development.

“Every track usually started with an experiment or a sound that we were inspired to build on,” Miriam says. “There are tracks like ‘the twig’, which began with a sample from Marius playing his saxophone through an effects pedal, while ‘as it tilts’ was the result of overdubbing over a motif I was playing on the harp while the others dampened the strings with their hands. The whole record is a mix of compositions made up on the spot and then either overdubbed in post-production or left exactly as they were in the moment.”

Two compositions that best exemplify this reflexive process are ‘portunes’ and ‘hollow hill’. On the inquisitive, sprightly textures of ‘portunes’, the group built a concept based around an arpeggiated loop on harp, which provides a shimmering base for piano harmonics and Marius’ processed saxophone soloing, while the eight-minute emotive odyssey ‘hollow hill’ is simply a section of an improvised jam composed and recorded on the spot. “It’s a jam where everything just went right and it still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it now,” Moses says. “It started with Robert’s synth soundbed and then we were each sparked to carry on from there, slowly developing motifs into feelings of their own, until we magically knew when to stop. Thank god we pressed record!”

Capturing those fleeting yet profound moments is at the heart of the al.so ethos, but while their music-making might have been immediate, its release has taken four years to finally come to light. “We got together in 2022 without knowing whether we would ever put this music out but in the years since we’ve all been coming back to it and we haven’t been able to let it go,” Moses says. “I’m so glad it’s now being shared with the world as it’s something that’s stayed with us ever since we started.”

‘portunes’ is ultimately a captivatingly brief yet nuanced and deeply felt body of work that listeners can immerse themselves in. A break from the chaos and freneticism of the world we live in, the EP is a space where we can take our time to sink into the soundworld of these four musicians who are each operating at their peak, drawing on vast and varied musical experiences to create something entirely free from expectation. With plans to recreate their first performance back in the round at Emmauskirche and the tantalising prospect of more studio explorations to come, it’s clear the musical spaces of al.so are ready to expand.