With full access to the legendary MPS Records catalog, electro-lounge pioneers De-Phazz have reimagined a selection of classics on Belooped — a richly layered musical collage with a seamless fusion of timeless jazz and classic sophistication with contemporary club culture and modern dance floors.

MPS and De-Phazz. Two musical institutions. Based in southern Germany, at home all over the world. belooped finally brings together what has attracted many hipsters to the dance floors of Hamburg, Honolulu, Munich and Miami over the past decades. On the one hand, there is the tongue-in-cheek playfulness of the lounge export hit De-Phazz, launched in Heidelberg in 1997 by Pit Baumgartner, with its millions of streams on Spotify & Co. On the other hand, there is the archive of the record company MPS, founded in 1968 by Hans-Georg Brunner-Schwer in Villingen, which is cultically revered by DJs and rare groove hunters. Old meets new, digital meets analogue. What remains is the unique atmosphere. As well as the unmistakable sense of grooves and wonderful melodies that connect Brunner-Schwer’s productions recorded between the 1960s and 1980s with the electro-organic vibes of De-Phazz.

For music collage artist Baumgartner, it was, in his own words, a ‘ticket to paradise’ when he was granted access to over 500 recordings from Germany’s first jazz label – records featuring world stars such as Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, George Duke and Sun Ra. Recorded with the best equipment available at the time. Brunner-Schwer’s living room often served as a recording location; two floors above, the co-owner of the radio company SABA had set up a studio in his villa. Downstairs, guests listened to a house concert by Duke Ellington or Bill Evans, while upstairs Brunner-Schwer recorded it for his ‘Musik Produktion Schwarzwald’ (Black Forest Music Production). Or ‘Most Perfect Sound’, as the record company’s abbreviation was often interpreted.

Since we’re among friends here: Of course, Baumgartner had used MPS sound snippets for his clever sample montages before, perhaps not entirely legally, but in any case, the statute of limitations had expired. ‘I didn’t know what was happening to me, suddenly stepping out of the shadows of criminality and being allowed to officially get my hands on the MPS gems,’ jokes the De-Phazz founder. He immediately follows this up with an unusually serious remark, saying that he definitely felt the pressure of responsibility given the label’s magnificent history, which has been under the umbrella of the Hamburg-based media company Edel since 2014. That’s why the Heidelberg native doesn’t refer to his careful reworkings of MPS gems such as Oscar Peterson’s “Wave”, Ella Fitzgerald’s “This Girl’s In Love With You”, Monty Alexander’s “Love and Happiness” and the choral poems of Singers Unlimited as remixes or reworks. Rather, they are restorations, according to Baumgartner. Like a sleek vintage car that still runs great but could use a little polish and a little more pressure on the tyres. So that driving it is really fun again. And also gets people on board who don’t usually have much to do with jazz. In practice, this means that Baumgartner, a savvy retro-romantic who has already had the opportunity to thoroughly overhaul Bert Kampfert’s oeuvre with the family’s blessing, provides colour intensification in the bass, fresh filters and some modern bridging. He also doesn’t shy away from adding new components here and there. This results in some dreamlike combinations on belooped, which deliberately carries the word ‘beloved’ in its editing technique and hearts These are musical tête-à-têtes that never actually took place in this specific form: In the reworking of Oscar Peterson’s “Wave” (from the MPS album Motions and Emotions), guitar legend Joe Pass suddenly appears; in the new version of George Duke’s “Capricorn” (released in 1974 on Faces in Reflexion), shouts from orchestral maverick Sun Ra can suddenly be heard. Added to this are hand-picked instrumental and vocal additions from De-Phazz’s own production – trumpeter Joo Kraus and trombonist Jona Heckmann subtly embellish Ernest Ranglin’s “Feel Like Making Love”, while singers Barbara Lahr and Sandie Wollasch enrich the lyrics of numbers such as “Shelda” by West Coast band Smoke and Alphonse Mouzon’s “Do I Have To?”. The line “Not guilty for disco dancing” is definitely to be understood programmatically.

Is something like this even allowed by the jazz police? Baumgartner has found a good phrase to defend himself: “Loop your idols” instead of “Kill your idols”! This means that you show your heroes and heroines the greatest admiration by using contemporary production methods to open up a future for them far removed from elitist conceit.

Just how well the worlds of MPS and De-Phazz fit together is evident in the album’s finale: when current MPS artist Malia sings George Shearing’s “The Continental” from 1976, one inevitably thinks of the De-Phazz hit “The Mambo Craze” from 1999. It seems as if Pit Baumgartner and Hans-Georg Brunner-Schwer are shaking hands across time and space with an appreciative nod. The idea doesn’t seem so far-fetched: belooped could easily have been played during the famous MPS parties in Brunner-Schwer’s living room. The music-loving and tech-savvy host would certainly have enjoyed it.