»Jupiter« | Tim Ra

Utopian music

Tim Ra has landed on Earth and is bringing fresh utopias: twelve tracks about free spaces, free love, and a free society—without work as it is understood today. On his seventh studio album, Ra condenses biography and social vision into a grooving artistic manifesto. Release date 06/10/2021

In the process, influences from soul, hip-hop, and club merge into music that glides over the dancefloor — like the Studio 54-glam-inspired »Loveparty International,« which has sex on the beach with elegantly eroticized rap and a »craving for mussels,« while asking about our role in the cosmos in deep lines about the »salt in our tears.«.

First sketches were created over twenty years ago. Following the success of his bands »Wohnung« and »No Underground,« he laid the foundation for his current approach to music through all-night improvised electro sessions with Chilly Gonzales and Raz Ohara at the Berlin club Maria. And that is also how many of the tracks on »Jupiter« emerged from long stretches of musical and vocal improvisation with musical friends, which he sculpturally shaped into songs on the computer.

Ras's many years of work as a political artist spell out »Jupiter« as a resounding yes to life. While his dark electronic opus »We Are Anonymous« processed the war on terror and thus revived the protest song, as Max Dax wrote in 2015 in the analyzed Frankfurter Rundschau on two pages, »Jupiter« carves a way out of the darkness — including one's own depression.

Out of the positive impulse emerged his new music and video label »lovelab.berlin/«, thus his trio »Liebende« was born, whose funky, club-infused improvisations fulfill the longing for happiness and groove. And thus an album was created that is dedicated to a feasible, concrete utopia which nevertheless reaches into cosmic infinity.

With dreamy tracks like »Am Ufer« (On the Shore), »Im Elysium« (In Elysium) or »Wir sind die Wellen« (We Are the Waves), which tell of being in love like gentle touches, a sense of vastness arises that does not exhaust itself in individual happiness. Here, home is more than a private relationship, a specific group or nation — it »once was the sea,« the place of longing where the illusion of identity dissolves — and a humanity freed from hardship and toil is already in its initial throes.

Ra's utopian message ultimately culminates in the track »Menschheit« (Humanity). Framed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.»s famous anti-racist «I Have a Dream" speech, the piece tells of a society that—liberated from external constraints—grows through its pain and softens, instantly striking a chord with 200,000 viewers on YouTube.

In this place of vulnerability opens up the longing night, sung of by Olivia and Ra with stardust-shimmering vocoder voices, which holds hope and gives strength. For especially in the darkness, it is the trust that everything will turn out well in the end that counts. Twelve tracks with one message: dreams come true. Even if not always in the way one had dreamed them.

On the shore | Tim Ra

An accident, a strange woman, and Ra's encounter with himself. »Tell me what love means when the heart is tearing apart.« Perhaps it's all just a dream — but the sky stretches out into infinity.

Love-sick | Tim Ra

A cry for love — naked and unfiltered. Funky, dada, rhythmic, rolling, intense.

Humanity | Tim Ra

Where love was, love will be: to free humanity from its chains. For humane working and living environments where everyone can become who they are. For an unconditional basic income.

Shells | Tim Ra

For a night of love, Olivia calls him ashore. A story of the tides and of love. Everything has its time. And yet it is an eternal cycle.

Twelve heavenly flows

Improvised vocal warm-up session with Joe Mexicano & Ra on Dec 4, 2019.

Loveparty International

Pleasure, excess, waste: The bass bounces, the synths squeak — thanks to clip director Gregor Marvel, Studio 54 has landed in Berlin.

The salt

»We came here to understand the miracle — and all the salt in our tears.«

Shells (Rockedit)

The wave touches us.

Truck Drivin Devil

»Ride across meadows and through forests and wherever I please.«

Lovers | Pure Bass Sex

We came. We saw. We loved. Joe Mexicano, Egyptian Mama and Tim Ra live in the studio.

Selected discography

»Jupiter on Bandcamp

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