Very jazz radio friendly originals to sedate the masses if being savagely uncharitable perhaps. But riding shotgun with an incredible band of top Americans (and an Australian) Blue Note pianist Aaron Parks, Pat Metheny bassist Linda May Han Oh whose best soloing is found on ‘Second Nature’ and the drummer Gregory Hutchinson known for his work with Soweto Kinch in recent years, Nils Wülker proves a compelling presence .
Tunes are easy to grasp but aren’t dumbed down, they inhabit a bluesy modality and are romantic on a certain level but are not doom laden.
This was recorded in the Bowie shrine the Hansa Studios in Berlin and sounds a million dollars.
Wülker who is in his late forties hails from Bonn and studied at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.
The work of his l like best are his collaborations with guitarist Arne Jansen especially his 2023 issued take on Trent Reznor’s ‘Hurt.’
For his 2022 album Continuum Wülker composed music for symphony orchestra and jazz quartet.
And a version of a strand of ‘Continuum’ is here and simmers with intent and potential generously. ‘FOMO Fighter’ I like best of all for its piano intro but without exaggerating all the tunes have a lot of merit and the whole thing flows so you don’t have to break off and cherry pick tunes here and there while skipping the rest.
It’s quite 1990s in the sense that melodicism isn’t frowned upon.
There isn’t a massive amount of improvisation, but there is inventive paraphrase and elaboration in the freedom to express beyond the tramlines of the tunes – it isn’t a file-under-cacophony kind of record given the prevalence of strong thematic themes and sub motifs surgically stitched together so you can’t discern the sutures.
But the essential expression veering as close to the diatonic as is safe without being cheesy or going kitsch is open enough and manages to allow for lots of interesting harmonic switches and surprises.
The tunes above are all extremely strong. There is no need at all for a singer or covers which could have been a necessity if the tunes weren’t sufficient.
This could have all gone so horribly wrong and become an exercise in hubris instead. It doesn’t. Instead it’s ideal and confidently rewarding weekend listening from a certain perspective that values musicianship and a certain artisan pride that isn’t at all performatively arts over elbows pseudery.
Hutchinson even rocks out a bit on ‘Forces at Work’. It says confidence on the tin after all but written in the tongue of Goethe. And nothing is mercifully lost in translation however you parse the approach. It’s not a Faustian pact at all to embrace all this tunefulness.
