“It took me a long time to understand that improv is a vocabulary that needs a proper grammar that you also have to invent,” Berlin based visual artist, comics writer and musician Mazen Kerbaj tells Mariam Rezaei in The Wire 456. “For me,” he continues, “this is the difference between a good and bad improvisor because developing new sounds is only part of it. Knowing how to use them makes you a good improvisor.”

During the interview, Kerbaj discusses the art of collaboration, which is the focus of his latest release Sampler/Sampled. Described as “an album made of two interdependent parts, rather than a double album”, Sampler collects over 300 short trumpet works, and Sampled is a series of collaborative tracks on which Kerbaj’s co-composers use sounds lifted from Sampler.

Recorded during the Covid lockdown, the project was a means for artists to collaborate from a distance in isolation, while also aiming to break boundaries set by genre categorisation. Here, Kerbaj shares previews of a selection of Sampled tracks featuring collaborations with Austrian producer Electric Indigo, Palestine's Muqata’a, Gavsborg from Kingston, Jamaica, and more.

Read Rezaei's interview with Mazen Kerbaj in full inside The Wire 456. Wire subscribers can also read the feature online via the digital archive. Sampler/Sampled is released via Morphine on 25 February.