Mario Rom, trumpet
Lukas Kranzelbinder, double bass
Herbert Pirker, drums
‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Mario Rom‘s Interzone is a band formed out of a need to play music at the most basic and perhaps the only sensible way: without any rules or forced complexity.
It includes three of Austria‘s most promising young musicians, all around 25 years of age: Mario Rom, despite his age, is already one of the leading trumpeters of his generation. Lukas Kranzelbinder is not only one of Austria‘s most sought-after jazz bassists but has also composed an opera premiering in July 2012. Herbert Pirker, one of the busiest drummers in Europe, has shared the stage with virtually every respected Austrian musician.
Interzone has made a conscious choice to play without a chordal instrument in order to achieve more freedom, space, and flexibility. Their main interest lies in communication and in creating and composing on the spot: anything can – and will – happen.
The band moves freely between all possible styles of jazz, from hard bop to avant-garde, even funk – but all played in their own way. No licks, no nonsense, just pure truth.
Oh – and they swing their asses off.
Visit the Interzone!
You‘ll be persuaded, I promise.’
(Charles Benway, Loop.Collective-Magazine, UK 2011)
Mario Rom
Born in 1990 in Hall/Admont [AT], Mario Rom started studying the trumpet with Bernd Rom when he was 8. Since 2004 he is a member of the famous class of Prof. Josef Eidenbergerat the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz. He was awarded several prices at Prima la Musica and the 2007 Marianne Mendt Jazzcompetition. 2010 he was chosen as the only Austrian Musician into the Band „Generations Unit“, with which he recorded a CD in 2011, including Adrian Mears as an artistic director.
He has worked and played with: Dave Liebman, Christoph Cech, Harri Stojka, Michael Mantler, Harry Sokal, Janus Ensemble, Jazzwerkstatt Wien, Studio Dan, Salonorchester Alt Wien, Fatima Spar, Andrej Prozorov….
Lukas Kranzelbinder
Born in 1988 in Klagenfurt [AT], Lukas Kranzelbinder, despite his tender years, has already become one of the most active and versatile bassists of the young Austrian music scene. He is the organizer of the ‘Polyamory Sound Festival’ [www.polyamorysound.com], taking place in various European cities and bringing musicians from diverse music scenes together, Since the summer of 2011 he is part of the ‘New Austrian Sound of Music’- Program, where he was chosen as 1 of 5 young musicians to represent their country as a jazz musician worldwide.
At this time Kranzelbinder lives in Vienna and works on his Spanish Opera Muchogusto, which will be premiered at the well-known Festival “Carinthischer Sommer” in July 2012.
Herbert Pirker
Born in 1981 in Mooskirchen [AT], Herbert Pirker is one of the busiest drummers from the Austrian Jazz Scene. He was awarded with the Hans KollerJazzprice2 times (2004 & 2007) and basically worked with all the big names from the national & international Jazz Scene: Karl Ritter, Wolfgang Mitterer, Louis Sclavis, Kelomat, Alex Machacek, Wolfgang Puschnig, Jack Walrath, Klaus Dickbauer, Max Nagl, Jazzwerkstatt Wien, Christoph Dienz, Linley Marthe, Otto Lechner…
Press Reviews
CD: Nothing is true
‘Just get out there and play’. A football trainer‘s words to his team work just as well as a guiding principle for music. Do what you like, but do it well and do it differently every time. For instance Interzone, the trio led by 22-year-old Austrian trumpeter Mario Rom, just goes out there. And plays. Growly, gnarly, confident and nimble – a good formula. Time and again the interaction between bass, drums and trumpet reveals new layers: driving grooves and driven melody lines, references to 1960s jazz or the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean, memories of pharmaceutically induced excesses, of tribulation and confusion, of journeys to musical worlds already long dead and forgotten by the time the three musicians first picked up their instruments.
[…] Interzone is named for William S. Burroughs’ ecstatic convolution of prose, a work he completed during his time in Tangier, the brimming sensuality of which clearly served as a model for the trio. Burroughs‘ milieu was the disturbed, rootless Tangier bohème of the 1950s; Mario Rom, the confidently propulsive bassist Lukas Kranzelbinder and drummer Herbert Pirker seize the chance offered by their youth and their distance from the epicenter of jazz: Nothing is true – literally, in this in-between world – but, it would seem, everything is permitted.
Recklessly and impetuously they break their trail, clearing away stylistic signposts, swinging, grooving, abruptly changing tempo; in short: playing, following wherever the energy leads them in the moment. Even Ornette Coleman‘s bittersweet ballad ‘Lonely Woman’ must bow to their whim in the end: Mario Rom and his comrades step on the gas, leave scratches and scars on the melody – and wrest from it, with this rough treatment, an undreamed-of power.’
(Stefan Hentz, Die Zeit, March 2013)
‘…straight-ahead bebop phrases, freely tonal avant-garde, thumping funk grooves and pulsating free meters. […] Brillant!’
(Martin Laurentius, Jazzthing, February 2013)
„Drive, humor, virtuosity and a flirtatious touch of retro mark what may be this autumn‘s best domestic jazz album. Styrian trumpeter Mario Rom shows international caliber with this compact sensation“.
(Otmar Klammer, Kleine Zeitung, December 2012)
‘Nothing Is True’ (Laub Records), the newly released debut album from the trio known as Interzone, proves a refreshingly unconventional and elegant reinterpretation of the classic definition of jazz. Anything but excessively intellectual, the music is atmospheric, tasteful and varied.
With exhilarating fleet-footedness, confidence and a clear love of experimentation, the three-man team swings through the wide world of jazz, without needing to reinvent it. They simply avail themselves of the many styles classified as ‘jazz’: a little bebop here, a little funk there, a pinch of avant-garde and it‘s done – a graceful group sound, far more colorful than much of what one usually hears in this musical context.
Led by trumpeter Mario Rom‘s versatile, melody-oriented playing, the music steers clear of awkwardness and is constantly in flux. Lukas Kranzelbinder and Herbert Pirker do a truly excellent job here as well, providing an appropriately dynamic rhythmic basis. Whether in the playful passages or in more introverted moments, Interzone‘s offerings never lose themselves in triviality but follow the famous golden thread from the first note on.
(Michael Ternai, Mica, January 2013)