Until now best known for his max.bab quartet, composer and saxophonist Max von Mosch now brings us his first album under his own name on the German ACT label. Although he has lived in Berlin for only two years, von Mosch is at the forefront of a new generation of German jazzmen, and the extended line-up here features leading names from Munich, Berlin and Cologne. This album, recorded during a residency at the Jazzclub Unterfahrt Munich in 2012, features music inspired by the first walk in space (alto saxophonist Christian Weidner, we are told, has the job of floating off into the void) and gnomes in a forest clearing. And then there's the title track, ‘a tribute in three movements to a city whose explosive brew of opposing polarities provides the breeding ground for all creative output’. It's all good stuff, if a little short on kaboom.