At a glance
A dozen tracks on this nimbly swinging hard bop album from Maik Krahl, the title track is kept to last.
Tunes are by trumpeter Maik Krahl
Born in 1991 in Bautzen, Germany, Krahl – who has recorded extensively with the Cologne based Subway Jazz Orchestra – we encounter here with Canadian sax star Seamus Blake and Krahl’s fellow Germans bassist Julian Peter Nitsch and drummer Peter Gall.
Maik Krahl debuted with Decidophobia
Krahl studied in Dresden and later in Essen and debuted with Decidophobia in 2018.
Fraction (which like the new release featured Blake) followed two years later.
Earlier work of Krahl’s featured Kurt Rosenwinkel
The trumpeter also collaborated with Kurt Rosenwinkel on In-Between Flow which was released a couple of years ago.
The Magic of Consistency itself is tidy, a bit retro, certainly as much a 1960s acoustic sound given the idiom as any later period, Gall gets a good groove going in a kind of Wolfgang Haffner style on ‘Wolf and Dog / Friendly Encounter.’
Maik shows his solo chops on the brief a cappella track ‘Maik Introduces’ most, which, for the trumpet students among us, is the place to go first to hear his very clean and precise chops and his mastery of little fluttery runs and deft tumbles melodically.
All the players in Maik Krahl’s quartet make what they do seem unclinical and natural
The album goes very balladic at the beginning of ‘Roofless’. And maybe if casting around for a few points of comparison the trumpeter proves a little Tom Harrell like here. Elsewhere, as on opener ‘Le Pin Sec’, Krahl – in the more scrabblingly detailed passages – moves into a Freddie Hubbard-type space.
Even when the American Harrell more often than not plays flugel these days, that doesn’t really matter as there are a certain amount of things both players have in common whatever the choice of horn.
Certainly both are capable of highly sensitive communicative timbral expression best of all found on examples like earlier album Fraction‘s ‘Opening’. But, dear reader, go listen to Harrell’s Alternate Summer which came out this year if you missed it.
So, a pleasant album and all the players make what they do seem easy and unclinical – they are good at natural flow.
Krahl should be better known beyond Germany. Maybe this album released last month will aid that process of wider familiarity. Let’s hope.
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