Blair / Huber, the innovative jazz duo formed by Frankfurt’s award-winning saxophonist, Darius Blair, and distinguished guitarist Niko Huber, have confirmed details of the much-anticipated debut album.
Due for release on October 16, 2026 on limited edition vinyl and via digital platform, ‘ECLIPSE’ was co-produced by the band with their long-time partner, Nicolas Butka, and recorded earlier this year with engineer Antonio Pulli, a two-time Grammy winner, at Berlin’s Funkhaus Saal 3.
Friends for well over a decade, Blair and Huber began playing as a duo at the pandemic’s start. Since then, they’ve built an enviable reputation, live and on record, for conjuring a brand of discreetly inventive, captivating tunes from an unusually spartan setup, becoming one of the most promising acts in their homeland’s flourishing jazz scene.
‘ECLIPSE’ confirms their immaculate instincts, its intriguing appeal encapsulated in nine succinct, bewitching tunes. Reflecting their bond, both musical and personal, ‘ECLIPSE’’s title represents the alignment of two forces and the subsequent transformative energy. They were searching, Blair says, “for a common language between hip hop and jazz, something modern and cutting edge that also hits the same spiritual space as the cats in the 60s.” With Blair’s flair for an indelible tune interwoven with Huber’s singular style, Blair / Huber always sound different, like nothing or no one else. On ‘ECLIPSE’, they outshine themselves altogether.
Questions and Answers:
3 FACTS
1: Buy more records.
2: Niko is not a big fan of effect pedals.
3: We’re gonna play live – a lot. Keep an eye out.
11 QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Niko: I think traveling and experiencing new things is a big creative boost! That’s why I love touring so much, being in a lot of different places in a short amount of time, meeting cool people, seeing new places, eating good food in the best-case scenario, and so on…
Darius: A big part is definitely listening to other people play music, there are so many amazing artists out there and there is nothing more inspiring to me than listening to great people play. But also outside of music itself, inspiration comes from all kind of things, being around different places and people always leaves you with new impressions.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
Niko: I grew up in a musical household since my father builds guitars. I started playing drums at the age of 3 and shortly after that, I picked up the guitar. I saw a lot of shows at a very young age, which I’m really thankful for. It definitely pushed me in a certain direction.
Darius: my parents always tell me I always gravitated towards making sounds on different things. I got my first instrument, which was a recorder, when I was 3 or 4 I think, since then music was my favourite thing to do and when I was old enough to understand you have to choose one thing to make a living from Music already was my favourite thing to do for a long time so the choice made itself.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Niko: In terms of what was the most influential in my playing I have to say:
– Abbey Road – The Beatles
– To pimp a butterfly – Kendrick Lamar
– Songs for the deaf – QOTSA
– Christian Scott – Diaspora
– Miles Davis – Miles Smiles
Darius: Impossible to say for me honestly, there are a lot of albums I always come back to and get sick of them again at some point and repeat this process over and over. 5 of those favorites, that I’m currently listening to again are:
– Yesterday you said tomorrow (Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah)
– ATLiens (OutKast)
– Footprints Live (Wayne Shorter)
– Goin‘ Home (Archie Shepp)
– Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Niko: It’s a place we’re always looking forward to go to, but also happy to leave at the end. There are a lot of great musicians, studios and good friends in the city itself, but we wouldn’t want to live there haha. To grey and maybe too cold. It’s cool to hang out for a while, be creative, and meet up with people.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Darius: my favourite place to hang out in Frankfurt is „Osthafen Park“, there is a nice concert venue there called Jazz Montez and me and my friends always hang out in the park before and after concerts. It’s really cute there!
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Niko: I always say that if I hadn’t grown up in Germany, but somewhere near the ocean, I would have spent way more time surfing than practicing. But I wouldn’t say it would have kept me from making music or pursuing the goal of doing this professionally.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listened to?
Niko: The last record I’ve been listening to was the new Dinner Party record „Watchu bringing?“. And the last record I bought on vinyl was Turnstile‘s „Never enough“.
Darius: For me the last record I bought/listened to is Mwandishi by Herbie Hancock.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Niko: We often talk about who we’d like to work and collaborate with. We recently worked with Noah Fürbringer, which was really cool, on our song ‘PRISM BREAK.’ Darius and I had already been talking about it about a year ago, and in April we finally recorded the track together with Noah. For me, in the context of this duo, the ultimate collaboration would be with Kendrick Lamar, since it would be something very fresh-sounding in this instrumentation context. And I think Darius isn’t too far away from that dream collaboration idea either haha…
Darius: For sure, Kendrick would be dope! Also from all people still alive, the person feel like would feel the most special to create with or just experience in a creative space would be Herbie Hancock, being part of so much of the music that shaped me from my early days of playing throughout every phase of my musical development. I love the way he describes his creative process or rather his philosophy of „creating“, I think it would be really special to experience it too.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Darius: I once opened up for Branford Marsalis with my band at the time at the Stuttgart Jazz Open, I think that was both the gig I was most excited about playing ever and the best Band Performance I ever saw!
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Darius: Technology allows a Musical Performance to live on longer than for the moment it’s lasting. I mostly see myself as a saxophonist and experience and write music out of this perspective. I came to meet the available technology as a tool to capture a performance. But getting to know different tools and devices that let you manipulate a captured sound opens up a whole other dimension of creation, it takes music away from just being limited to the moment the performance lasts and lets you sit with something and let it grow while working on it, as if you where painting a picture.
11. Please tell us more about how your new album *ECLIPSE* came about.
Niko: We started writing for the record before even our debut EP came out. We sat down at my place and just started playing and jamming on ideas. The songs came together very naturally and the whole writing process felt very flowy – no pressure or creative blocks. We finished the writing process at the end of December 2025 and went to Berlin in January 2026 to record the album at Funkhaus, in Nils Frahm’s Studio Saal 3. It was an amazing experience to work and record there, since it’s such a beautiful and special room. Together with Nicolas and Antonio, we recorded the whole album over two long days. And now we’re really looking forward to release the album and see where it takes us!
