After a short period of absence, both the Turkish born guitarist Timuçin Şahin and the German jazz quartet Hornstrom released a new album this week. Two decidedly contrasting albums, but both equally wonderful.
Timuçin Şahin's Flow State - Nothing Bad Can Happen
The guitarist, who went to the Netherlands in 1992, studied at the Hilversum Conservatories and jazz guitar in Amsterdam, and then studied classical composition at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, sees flow as the "the possibility of a renewal, a kind of recollection of lost virtues that lead us out of this general state of indifference in which we currently are." Şahin's current band with the pianist Cory Smythe, bassist Christopher Tordini and old-hand drummer Tom Rainey help him to slide into this very special flow on the new album Nothing Bad Can Happen. The three co-musicians and friends are fearless and impressive improvisers.
They provide the chance with their passionate and creative contributions to enter a largely undiscovered sound world, combining all surrounding acoustic information into a new musical value system.The high art of eight pieces is in fact serving all influences from rock all the way to Ornette Coleman’s Harmolodics not as clichés on a silver platter, but rather cleverly hidden in a dense forest full of overlapping instrumental contributions.
Hornstrom - Dark
The jazz quartet Hornstrom, consisting of two trombones, bass and drums, present a completely different sound. The eight songs — all self-compositions by the trombonists Wember and Heidenreich — meander somewhere on the edges of modern jazz, rock, minimal music, and drum'n'bass without wanting to join the general trend of cross-bordering. Klaus Heidenreich, Tobias Wember, Silvio Morger, and Markus Braun have succeeded with Dark in creating something like a comprehensible quadrature of a circle: combining the highest degree of compositional diligence with the unconditional desire for improvisational freedom, as well as the greatest possible virtuosity in the handling of the instruments with a casual portion of humor, which can sometimes also take refreshing self-mocking twists.
To mold clear musical structures with sober and at the same time elegiac elements into a homogeneous band sound is the declared goal, Tobias Wember stated. It need not be a contradiction by any means as the guys of Hornstrom place the development of the four individuals in the foreground precisely in this mature collective.
© 2017 - NewArts International / Challenge Records Int.
