Bringing together NY drummer/percussionist John Hollenbeck, also on prepared piano, with Berlin bassist Bernhard Meyer for an album that blends textural rock, electronic and jazz approaches in 9 elusively calm yet structurally turbulent pieces, using complex systems of cross rhythms against atmospheric immersion, occasionally disruptive but generally eccentrically controlled and exploratory.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2020 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded at Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, in Berlin, Germany, by Marco Birkner.
"It may not seem that way - there's a mix of soft rock-oriented and minimal atmospheres all along this record,sometimes making us think of the quietest instrumental moments conjured by Tame Impala or even Cigarettes After Sex - but both Bernhard Meyer and John Hollenbeck are jazz musicians.
With no overdub, this duo sounds like much more than two players at work, and that's because of the different sound layers they manage to overlap. But if this is not a jazz record, neither is a pop-rock or an ambient one, having nothing to do with the reimagination of the pop universe that Hollenbeck did some time ago to songs by Cindy Lauper, Daft Punk, Queen and Burt Bacharach. The music inside is to complex, to exploratory, to deliciously strange to have a label.
Immersive, but never imposing on us, it takes its listeners to a flight above ourselves and our surroundings, as if studying us in relation to space and time. A very welcome surprise."-Shhpuma