Days of Twang

The prolific and long-running De-Phazz (also known as DePhazz) is a contemporary lounge project led by Peter "Pit" Baumgartner, a German-Austrian producer who has surrounded himself with a shifting cast of collaborators that includes vocalists Barbara Lahr, Karl Frierson, and Pat Appleton. Beginning with Detunized Gravity (1997), Baumgartner and company have explored various forms of lounge music, much of it balancing samples with live instrumentation, with innumerable cross-sections of vintage jazz and soul, easy listening, and Latin music. De-Phazz tracks like "No Jive" and "The Mambo Craze" have appeared on dozens of compilations with "lounge," "chill," and "café" in the title. Though much of the De-Phazz catalog could be termed studio creations, it also contains collaborative, acoustic, and live projects such as Big (recorded with the Radio Bigband Frankfurt, 2009), Naive (2013), and Private (2016). No stranger to outside work, Baumgartner remixed Ella Fitzgerald's "Wait 'til You See Him" for the first Verve Remixed compilation, as well as tracks by the likes of Kool & the Gang, a-ha, and Blank & Jones. ~ Andy Kellman