Kilian Sladek releases “All Yours” featuring Joo Kraus

Munich vocalist and composer Kilian Sladek releases “All Yours”, the second featured-guest single from his forthcoming album Colorblind, today. The track features trumpeter, rapper and vocalist Joo Kraus and is out now on Bergson Music.

I wrote about the first of these guest singles, “Gravity” with Torsten Goods, back in June, and “All Yours” makes clear just how differently Sladek is using each collaborator on this record. Where Goods brought a West Coast warmth to that track, Joo Kraus pulls the music somewhere else entirely. Kraus has spent three decades moving between acoustic jazz, hip-hop and electronic music, and that range is audible immediately — his trumpet and vocal contributions push “All Yours” toward the more rhythmically elastic, groove-led side of Colorblind.

Colorblind, due 9 October on LP and all streaming platforms, marks a deliberate shift from Sladek’s earlier work with Fragments on Unit Records. Those albums placed his voice inside a wider ensemble sound, atmospheric and diffuse. Colorblind moves the vocal to the centre and writes the songs as songs, in English throughout. The harmonic language is still rooted in jazz — minor eleventh colours, shifting tonal centres — but the frame around it now is neo-soul and R&B.

The record was developed over roughly three years with pianist and producer Sam Hylton. Sladek composes first, building from piano, harmony and melody, before he and Hylton develop and produce the tracks together. That sequencing matters on “All Yours” specifically: the beat is real and considered, and Kraus works within it rather than steering it, which keeps the track connected to the rest of the album even as it leans harder into groove than “Gravity” did.

One more single follows before the album lands: “Café Indigo”, featuring vocalist Karoline Weidt, trumpeter Lisa Buchholz and saxophonist Niko Zeidler, arrives 18 September. Producer Joshua Milo and drummer Lisa Wilhelm also feature on the album itself. Sladek has been clear that none of these pairings are casting decisions — each guest was written into the specific song they appear on, and the collaboration logic sits in the composition, not layered on afterward.

The album release will be followed by a live presentation at Bergson Kunstkraftwerk in Munich on 16 October. Bergson — developed from a former industrial heating plant in Aubing into one of west Munich’s most significant creative centres, with its own label, publishing infrastructure and resident artist pool — is both home to this project and the label behind it. Sladek has built the live side of Colorblind gradually through his “Kilian Sladek meets…” concert series there, and the 16 October date, with Torsten Goods and Karoline Weidt joining the full band on stage, brings that series to its conclusion.

My interview with Kilian, covering the making of Colorblind, the move away from Fragments, and his thinking behind each collaboration on the record, will be published here closer to the album release in October.

In the meantime you can hear the new single “All Yours” on our “New Release Spotify” playlist below.

New Release Spotify Playlist

The Jazz In Europe New Release playlist features tracks from the new releases reviewed on Jazz In Europe. Updated weekly, it is the best place to discover music selected by our editors — not algorithms. Follow the playlist to keep up with the kind of records we believe deserve attention and to stay ahead of the curve.