SALOMEA don’t have much to do with the usual standards of the music business. For the quartet from Cologne, it is much more important to create spaces and opportunities that enable them to fully formulate their own ideas and then pursue them – without regard for commercial results and without sacrificing contrast. In this group, urban jazz and experimental hip-hop play basketball together, and contemporary song formulas are scrutinised in order to generate new answers in intuitive jam sessions. “Yearning for change, for community, for reason”, they say at the beginning of “Conversations”, the title track of their 2021 EP of the same name. Change, community, meaning: If music can have an overarching purpose, what better purpose could there be? With their latest singles, “Love U” and “Eriqua”, the project also impressively demonstrate that jazz, hip-hop, and contemporary varieties of electronic music should make babies together.