The musicians of the progressive jazz group Points first met composer and performer Michal Rataj in 2015. Both sides went in hoping for mutual enrichment given their adherences to diverse compositional, interpretive, and listening traditions. However, the clearest product was an emerging space in which they could search for a new musical language on the crossroads of jazz, musique concrète, improvisation, and sound performance orchestrated in surround sound. The Points-Rataj Quintet was active for three years and created grounds for a continuation.

Oskar Török, Michal Rataj, and Luboš Soukup now continue in the best work produced by the Points-Rataj Quintet. They include more electronics, but also a flute, a medieval cimbalom, or a wide palette of percussion. Their new musical language is very emotionally charged, stretching from virtuosic instrumental technique and expressive sonic gestures to polyphonic electroacoustic ambient. The musicians seem to float between the promoters’ genres, through atmospheres as if they found themselves in a film, through the dynamics of a wide range of musical instruments: surprising… and being surprised.

Line-up: Oskar Török – trompet, percussions, live electronics; Michal Rataj
— live electronics, synths; Luboš Soukup — saxophone, clarinet, fluete