ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 examines the PLO (producer-led outfit) Jazzanova within post-reunification Berlin, a collective of music producers, DJs, and instrumentalists active since the mid-1990s. The role of the hybrid studio takes prominence, as it relates to producers labouring and excelling in crafting new jazz-oriented recorded material. The role of the jazz archive and of Black music is pivotal for this chapter’s understanding of sampling and of jazz vinyl for contemporary remixes displaying jazz-oriented sensibilities. This chapter argues that conventional priorities in relation to jazz praxis are transmitted within particular studio-oriented practices and values, including intimate knowledge of jazz records, collective organisation and forms of sociality surrounding such collections, and the studio-driven practice of creating hybrid jazz-inflected grooves through sampling and live beat construction. This chapter traces the growth of a jazz and Black music record-collecting community to highly specialised hybrid-studio producers and DJs during the last three decades within Berlin, now a European musical capital.
