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In the past years, the multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and music enthusiast Jeff Özdemir had been focusing on organizing the Live-Mixtape series in Berlin, inviting numerous artists to join him on stage for every single event. However, the year 2020 put an end to this. Undeterred, he instead put together the third instalment of the Jeff Özdemir & Friends series, working with singers, musicians and groups such as Knarf Rellöm & DJ Patex, F.S.Blumm, Joanna Gemma Auguri, Elke Brauweiler, and Elmer Kussiac for an 18-track album. Like its two predecessors from the years 2015 and 2017, respectively, Jeff Özdemir & Friends Vol. 3 sees the man behind Kreuzberg's 33rpm record store showcase his qualities as a people remixer, songwriter and versatile musician. He put together a collection of groovy tunes picking up on funk and Afrobeat rhythms, introspective ballads, a musically channeled punk attitude, shoegaze sentiments, spoken word passages, drones, glockenspiel sounds, seriously fun experimentation and much more. While artists like Ertan Doğancı, Désolé Léo, eng°n, F.S.Blumm and Zap have been long-term collaborators of Özdemir and were featured on previous instalments of the series, new faces and forces also enter the mix. The melancholic "Love Letters" for example marks the first (though hopefully not last) collaboration with singer Joanna Gemm Auguri, while Knarf Rellöm & DJ Patex's appearance has been dreamt of collectively but hasn't been fully realized until now. Whether it's Désolé Léo's French crooner soul, the lo-fi synth pop song "Bored" featuring former Commercial Breakup singer Elke Brauweiler or the many different sounds and styles presented under the name Jeff Özdemir: no decision is ever made between either that or this musical direction, but all are being joyfully enjoyed together. Thus, throughout its 70 minutes, the stylistic diversity of Jeff Özdemir & Friends Vol. 3 does not once border on randomness. Instead, these sometimes very different songs are marked by a shared atmosphere -- a direct result of these very different musicians approaching their studio time together less as a chance to make music but more of a chance to carefully listen to and interact with each other. The contributions by Vackrow, Gebrüder Teichmann's old band Beige GT, and Otto von Bismarck, do not even feature Özdemir, but are simply musical pearls that were (almost) lost in the shuffle of music history and unearthed for this very special occasion. Also features Daniel Raymond Gahn, Alexandre Thiercelin, Jeff Özdemir's New Hard Drive, and Treetop.
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