NICA live: The Resonators feat. Jelena Kuljić & Achim Kaufmann

Open, risky and completely in the moment: the music of The Resonators unfolds at the interface of song- and text-based improvisation, grunge rock energy and collective ecstasy. Raw power, intoxication and openness merge into musical arcs that point far beyond the sum of their individual parts. For drummer, composer and NICA artist Thomas Sauerborn, this creates the "almost perfect abstraction" of the music that has moved and inspired him since childhood.

Together with singer and performer Jelena Kuljić and pianist Achim Kaufmann, the band from Cologne and Berlin condenses freely improvised music into an urgent overall sound. Poems by Lola Ridge and Alice Dunbar-Nelson are embedded in the stream of sound and drive forward a narrative that ranges from quiet fragility to eruptive energy. This special constellation is also documented on the album dashin' headless, released in 2025 - a live recording made at the Plushmusic Festival in Cologne's LOFT and following on from the debut Headlong.

Music between quiet, floating moments - with echoes of early ECM aesthetics - and high-energy passages that evoke associations with Anthony Braxton, Jimi Hendrix, Annette Peacock or the Bitches Brew era of Miles Davis. The result is not a recourse to the familiar, but an independent collective voice.