Monophonic spree
The pastries are in. More Danish goodies. There’s a lot of simplicity here from keys-drums duo Svaneborg Kardyb, not exactly artist names that easily trip off the tongues of monoglot Anglophiles more’s the pity. But blame us for being tongue tied.
Scandi jazz is as hip and happening as ever. As a jazz listener I hear a lot of what’s on this as jazz adjacent. It’s not 1960s cosplay. And no one is delivering fake tales of San Francisco. But as with so much on Manchester label Gondwana’s output you could be arriving at what they put out from defiantly non-jazz hinterland. That ain’t a problem mucker unless in the mouldy figge farrago of constituencies you deem it to be capt’n.
Winter is coming
Would these sounds work in a top jazz UK club rather than a bigger venue? I don’t know. Would they work in a venue that puts on indie and electronica plus some jazz? There’s probably a better bet of that happening. And the highly eclectic Union Chapel in Islington is putting the band on this winter as it happens. It’s not exactly Game of Thrones bloodthirstyness and mayhem. Actually this is fairly gentle and often contemplative especially on the rolling piano lines of ‘Tvilinger.’
Not one size fits all ‘tronica
Nikolaj Svaneborg the keys dude here and Jonas Kardyb who is the drummer are not absolute beginners. 2022’s Over Tage launched their ship on international waters. Hardly a Viking raid their approach is more introspective and laidback. The keys are very hip especially the Juno bits and Joanna passages. There’s a Wurlitzer in there too.
Tracks to go for include the title track and ‘Cycles’. We have playlisted these quite a bit on the marlbank Spotify daily playlists. Superkilen is not an album where there are millions of chord changes or lots of metrical derring-do. Nobody shows off.
plus popular this week
You’ve reached your final destination
It’s pretty simple in the chordal department, strong for melodicism. If you are a diehard bebopper this isn’t really for you. ‘St Pancras’ is probably the best track in terms of impact. Actually the album could do with more oomph in a few places. But it does work as a mood piece. And yet the danger in that is it becomes under-conversation music. So you can imagine that happening in hipster bars when they put the record on which they would be foolish not to.
