Manafonistas

In 2009 four young, perpetually black-clad Londoners released an album blessed with a rare feeling of what one could call „sonic unity“: every track just fits. There’s something incredibly clean about the xx’s self-titled debut, as though the band are performing in an hermetically sealed room devoid of furniture, fittings, dust, microbes and, well, anything that isn’t their instruments. Sparse drum machine beats, taut bass, a guitar tone polished to a mirror sheen and understated vocals from Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft make up a record of immense restraint. It’s almost the opposite of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound”: there’s an evidence of sonic space here that makes the xx’s gloomy brand of pop a joy to listen to.

8/7/14 Oya Festival Oslo Norway
8/8/14 Flow Festival Helsinki Finland
8/9/14 Way Out West Festival Goteborg Sweden
8/11/14 VoxHall Aarhus Denmark
8/12/14 Mojo Club Hamburg Germany
8/13/14 Zakk Dusseldorf Germany
8/14/14 Sankt Peter Frankfurt Germany
8/15/14 Openluchttheater De Goffert Nijmegen Netherlands
8/16/14 Pukklepop Festival Hasselt Belgium
8/17/14 Green Man Festival Brecon Beacons United Kingdom

An interview with Steve Tibbetts (to be posted on May 15).

The record (ECM) will be out on May 18. 

Once upon a time, in fact, after the release of his last album called „Natural Causes“, Sean Kutzko wrote: „I’ve noticed a curious trend with me whenever Steve Tibbetts releases a new CD: I immediately freak out at the news, order it as soon as possible, and then wait for it to arrive without trying to learn any more about the release. When it finally arrives, there is a very conscious period of time when I hold it in my hands and wonder just what I’m going to get. It’s kind of like in baseball, when the runner rounds third and you realize there’s going to be a play at the plate. There’s a very fun couple of seconds where you know you’re going to see something exciting but you don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out. I love that about Steve’s CDs.

The other thing I’ve learned since Big Map Idea was not to make any initial reviews on the CD. Whether acoustic or electric, Steve’s music is exceptionally rich. It takes time to digest. Natural Causes is a definite shift from The Fall Of Us All. Yet the album is pure Steve; No track drove this point home to me more than „Chandogra.“ At :18 into the piece, as the acoustic guitar sets the theme, there is a two-note wisp of haunting guitar that definitively sets the mood as Tibbettsian. The rest of the piece features the mood of Marc Anderson’s frame drums, cymbals and other incidentals coupled with Steve’s thumb piano and stream-of-consciousness lines and hammer-ons. There is no other duet that has such a signature like Tibbetts and Anderson. Like Northern Song, there’s a lot of space between the notes here. It’s beautiful; enjoy it several times, and you will come to see that nobody else could have possibly made such a recording as this.“

Wolfgang Dauner, Urgestein des deutschen Jazz hat ein Album mit seinem Sohn Florian „Flo“ Dauner (mir mehr aus seiner Zusammenarbeit mit den „Fanta 4“ bekannt) eingespielt; ist gerade erschienen und liegt bei mir zu Hause auf dem CD Player und wartet auf Beachtung. – Dazu das Buch „Der Distelfink“; Ende letzter Woche aus der Vormerkung in der Stadtbuecherei meines Vertrauens ausgeloest.  Damit duerfte, zumindest was die Lektuere angeht, der Wonnemonat Mai gerettet sein !