The album takes its title from the idea of creating and exploring musical “rooms” – defined spaces in which the five musicians can move, interact and discover what lies within them. Audiences are invited to fill each room with their own associations, with every listen providing new opportunities for discovery.

For rooms.music, Pasquinelli combines traditionally composed pieces with collections of musical ideas, playing instructions and rough roadmaps. The framework remains clear, but the musicians have greater freedom to shape the music collectively, drawing on a shared conception of sound developed through many years of playing together.

Space is central to the album. Rather than filling every moment, the music leaves room for individual notes, silence, dynamics and interaction, allowing musical forms to develop beyond conventional song structures. AKKU avoids loops and computer-generated sound design, instead relying on the subtle dynamics and communication between the musicians. There are no conventional soloists: the collective is at the centre, with complex interlocking structures emerging through the ensemble as a whole.

The album’s room numbers also have a personal dimension. Pasquinelli has synaesthetic tendencies, associating numbers, letters, names and moods with specific colours. The colours he associates with each room number correspond to the atmosphere of the respective composition, with the numbering developing intuitively rather than according to a fixed system.

The quintet features Pasquinelli on drums alongside Maja Nydegger (grand piano, keys), Gabriel Wenger (saxophone), Markus Ischer (guitar) and Andi Schnellmann (bass). Founded in 2010, AKKU Quintet has toured extensively across Europe, as well as Russia, Canada, the USA and Japan. Pasquinelli is also drummer of Sonar, which regularly collaborates with David Torn, and drummer and co-composer of the duo Schrödinger’s Katze, while Schnellmann, Nydegger and the other members maintain their own projects across the Swiss jazz scene.