Track Listing

1. Waltz For Koop (feat. Cecilia Stalin)
2. Tonight (feat. Mikael Sundin)
3. Baby (feat. Cecilia Stalin)
4. Summer Sun (feat. Yukimi Nagano)
5. Soul For Sahib
6. Modal Mile (feat. Earl Zinger)
7. In A Heartbeat (feat. Terry Callier)
8. Relaxin' At Club F****n
9. Bright Nights (feat. Yukimi Nagano)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70145 in Music
• Released on: 2002-07-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Album Description
Koop comes from a universe where Miles Davis never made Bitches Brew, replacing swing with funk, and instead double basses kept walking and jazz kept swinging all the way until the sampler arrived to chop it up. Not electronic music with a touch of jazz, but jazz sparingly laced with electronics. Magnus Zingmark and Oscar Simonsson, both from Sweden's main university-town Uppsala, now residing in Stockholm, were the first two jazzheads in their hometown to lose interest in the perpetual Hammond organ-licking of Jimmy Smith. Instead, they embarked together down the more rewarding paths of Hard-bop and raw Latin beats, avoiding fusion's tendency to dilute the original spirit of jazz. Waltz For Koop has been re-released by Palm Pictures with a added tracks and a bonus DVD, containing the acclaimed videos for "Summer Sun" and "Glomd," as well as two remixes, "Summer Sun" (Markus Enochson Remix) and "Relaxin' at Club F***n" (Dorfmeister vs. Madrid de los Austrias Version).

Amazon.com
Koop combines a wealth of summery melodies and floating vocals with the acid jazz of Gilles Peterson and the laid-back trip-hop aesthetic of Jazzanova and Peter Kruder. The result is a sweet, effortless sound on Waltz For Koop. Starting off with a Brazilian feel, Koop enlists Astrud Gilberto-like chanteuses Cecilia Stalin and Yukimi Nagano to augment the mood, while later, electronic trickster-legend Earl Zinger shows up for a decadent "Modal Mile." The record takes an otherworldly turn with the presence of Chicago folk-jazz artist Terry Callier, as his wistful, spiritual pipes give "In a Heartbeat" a depth that eludes most DJs, who go for electronic lounge and end up with elevator music. Good-natured and accessible without being trendy, Waltz puts a lot of other "chill" collections to shame. --Matthew Cooke

About the Artist
Koop means co-operation. And apart from the core duo of composers / arrangers / producers Magnus Zingmark and Oscar Simonsson with their wide range of collaborators, what's really co-operating in Koop’s music is the sixties vocaljazz-magic of Swedish icon Monica Zetterlund with a producer-focused 2001.

Arriving at that point from, in Magnus’ case, hip hop’s Golden Age of Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions to the Detroit-techno euphoria of Inner City and their acid house-cousins and, in Oscar’s case, from Bird’s Parkers Mood and John Coltrane’s Alabama to playing the piano in a succession of DIY-jazz combos, the two decided to join forces in helping Swedish jazz regain that momentum it’s lacked ever since the sixties when all creativity and forward thinking talent escaped the genre. Perceiving jazz as rhythm and form rather than the orthodox idea of jazz being merely improvisation, Koop manages to escape the staleness of both some programmed music’s lack of variety, and some contemporary jazz recordings’ dead end fixation with clean sound.

On this, their second album, Magnus and Oscar have attempted to capture the combined elegance and rawness of the Clarke/Boland Sextet. An impressive cast of previously unknown, famous and legendary vocalists support the main instruments of piano, bongos & delicate percussion. Dissatisfied with the current industry standard of +70 minute albums, Koop make sure the new album, although two and a half years in the making, is brief in length while rich in content, like all the classic albums of the past.

Indeed, this album may well become a classic in its own right if one were to trust the lucky few who own a promo-CD. Waltz For Koop had been played, charted and loved to death by people like Kruder & Dorfmeister, Nuspirit Helsinki, Jazzanova, Rainer Trüby, Alan Brown, Les Gammas, DJ Mad Mats and Nick Weston. To this end BBC Radio One's highly esteemed DJ Gilles Peterson confidently exclaimed:

"The album of the year has already arrived!"

Music does things like that to you every now and then. At least this music does.

Customer Reviews

For the relaxed moments of life
I don't know whether anybody will be able to get anything out of that... description up there with its name-droppings which are, as so very often, pretty irrelevant. This record has nothing to do with Miles Davis. The other names mentioned are somewhat more relevant. If you're into either of those people, Kruder & Dorfmeister, say, then chances are that you will like this album.

Koop basically took *very* lush jazz samples and put dance music on top. They have a few musicians which play bass and bongos plus a set of singers, and the resulting music is a very relaxed downtempo affair. For those moments in life when you just feel like chillin out. The whole album gets a tiny little bit boring at the end but there are a few real gems on it. What's more, those gems are not overextended to last for seven or eight minutes - means they don't get boring as do too many other downtempo songs.

Luscious Ambient Jazz
I received the "Waltz for Koop" album as a premium for sponsoring KCRW, my local public radio station. KCRW's music staff is recognized for their ability to spot the best new talent, as well as break important records, and their reputation does not dim with the recommendation of this wonderful little CD. This is beautiful, breezy jazz that, at its best ("Summer Sun," "Baby"), recalls "Getz/Gilberto." Specifically, the voice of Yukimi Nagano suggests the exuberant insouciance of picnics, rides in convertibles on warm, full-moon nights, and an afternoon spent dancing barefoot with friends with a glass of sangria in your hand. Like Astrud Gilberto, the great talent of her voice is the emotion it evokes -- it's less about technical perfection and more about its acute ability to set a mood. In this case, that mood is cool, seductive, and all-too-brief -- at just over a half hour, this album is the party guest that leaves too soon, leaving you to make time with other less interesting folks until the lights go out. Buy the album, lend it to a friend for a cocktail party, simply enjoy. It shouldn't be long before Volkswagen or Target or Gap find "Waltz for Koop," and you want to buy it before *they* drive it into the ground, don't you?

Waltz For Koop: A perfect CD for the mood
We heard a selection from Waltz for Koop on the radio only a week ago, and decided to buy the cd. The selection we heard is "Summer Sun", performed by Yukimi Nagano. This track brought back memories from when I went to the Montreal Jazz Festival in summer of 2000. Why I like Summer Sun so much is because it is the exact style of Jazz my preferences can relate to.

The packaging is beautiful, as well as the cool graphics on the cd. I never heard of Koop before 1 week ago, and must say that this is just another one of those perfect cds which will stay in near the stereo. It's also fun to have a cd player in the computer, because when I want to hear some good music, I just throw on Koop or any of the other great cds previously reviewed in my about me area reviews page.
The voice of Cecilia Stalin amused me enought to want to play the cd twice in 1 hour. There are two really genuine reasons for that. One is on account of the cd length. It is the type of cd that you quickly get into, and bam, before you know it, it's over. The second reason is that there are only 9 songs in the tracklist....

Not much more to be said about the cd, but will say that it is definitely worth a listening to and buying as a result.