There is a version of jazz that plays it safe, that stays tasteful, that never risks losing the room. Moses Yoofee Trio has never been that band. The Berlin-based group won the 2024 German Jazz Prize’s Live Act of the Year award by doing the opposite: building a sound that pulls from nu jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and soul without asking permission from any of them. After a year spent touring across Asia, the US, and Europe behind their German Jazz Award-nominated debut album MYT, they are back with a double single that announces their next chapter with real force.
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Nothing To Lose, featuring singer-songwriter Mulay, is the kind of track that reminds you what the intersection of jazz and club music is actually capable of when it is handled by people who understand both. Tight drum grooves anchor a beefy bassline while glitchy, almost futuristic textures move through the mix in ways that feel less like production flourishes and more like a deliberate argument about where the genre is headed. The addition of Mulay’s voice adds an emotional center without softening the track’s edge. Its counterpart Inner Circles operates in a different register, giving the double release a range that feels intentional rather than accidental.
What makes the timing significant is the context surrounding it. Moses Yoofee Trio recorded their upcoming EP Chasing Light in their Neukölln rehearsal room over a week of continuous playing, borrowing microphones and pressing record when something worth capturing happened. Pianist Moses Yoofee describes it as deliberately DIY, a conscious decision to strip away the formality of studio production in favor of something more instinctive and unguarded. For a band that already had a reputation for translating live energy onto record, leaning further into that quality rather than away from it is a meaningful creative choice.
Chasing Light, produced by the trio and mixed by their longtime collaborator oh.no.ty, arrives on May 29th across all digital platforms and on vinyl. Nothing To Lose is the clearest signal yet of what to expect: a band that is not waiting for nu jazz to catch up with them.
