While District Five once started out as an ambitious jazz combo from Zurich’s Kreis 5, their history has always brought something new out of them. All four band members have earned their spurs in the most diverse genres and groups, from free improvisation to indie and rock. At the same time, they have been co-organizers of the Gamut Festival, one of the most important events for experimental music, for years and are considered open thinkers in search of new approaches and influences – also outside of music, where the group deals with social, political, or art-historical questions.

«The fact that our four lives are so interconnected also makes us somehow accessible and palpable. We’re never fake, never try to be something we’re not, but try to push each other in all directions.»
District Five

So, District Five is by far not just a «working band», but a collective of four friends who have always followed their objective, but also give space to their fragility. Burnt Sugar is the result of all this: a record between math-rock, post-punk, jazz, electronica and film score: the power-shuffle from Paul Amereller’s drumming, the balladic spaced out string-work by Vojko Huter, him on the lead vocal mike that is shared with singer and saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve or the electro or double bass riffs, added to the mix by Xaver Rüegg. «Burnt Sugar» bursts with ideas and inspires even more because its immense variety has been grandiosely captured by Manuel Egger in Winterthur’s Suburban Sound Recording Studio. That doesn’t mean it’s more jazz neither that it leans more into pop. «Burnt Sugar» has become a masterpiece that will – and must – provide fresh food for thought in the music scene. At the same time the record is a sign of immense musical diversity as well as long lasting friendship, which is what District Five is all about: «Searching together for something like freedom in a trapped world».