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CD Feature/ "F.S. Blumm meets Luca Fadda"

  Tobias

Everyone is meeting someone on this album. In New York, F.S. Blumm meets Luca Fadda. In the titles, Giorgi meets Lucy, Achim meets Giovi, Maude meets Bainzu, Ricke meets Dina, Andi meets Jason and Claus meets Angel. In the music, live performance meets studio reworking, geographical distance meets artistic closeness, warm upright bass patterns meet colourful trumpet lines, the Ahornfelder label meets Jazz. And I’m meeting my fate in giving this album a sweet and flowery review.

I was going to write something deep after all, something profound. On the way technology and unamplified instruments can combine to form new structures. About taking a single idea and stretching it, sustaining it until the point where its fabric turns fibrose and fragile. About encapsulating the same message in fifteen minute long epics and two minute short miniatures. On Jazz, its contemporary variations and the question whether “F.S. Blumm meets Luca Fadda” genuinely belongs in this department or merely constitutes a brief entry in the genre’s guestbook.

But then I actually listened to the music and all of these options evaporated. What was left was a haze, a daze, a daydream. Most of the material on this album stems from a performance given in front of an audience composed exclusively of children and that playful and lighthearted spirit has survived and made it to the digital medium.

Of course, the duo knows exactly how to play their instruments and how to achieve a specific effect. Blumm decorates the walls of his tracks with cracking noises, toy phone alarms, music box emmissions and mallets stroking randomly over glockenspiel keys, but each element falls into its very own place, disappearing in a greater meaning that is good and comforting. In turn, Fadda patiently waits for his turn, leaves the music to spin, rattle and hum freely for minutes, then adds careful but concise melodies, structured into little groups and always echoing out into electronically created gurglings and stutters. One half of the tracks is characterised by a floating sense of ease, the other by discreet woefulness. But not for once do things get agitated, depressed or hectic.

The album is very much about knowing if you have something good going on and holding on to it. About the truth conceiled in simple messages. And about different worlds colluding thanks to their creator’s artistic alignment. Deep essays and profound analyses are out of place in such an environment and while listening to this record requires no theoretical background knowledge in Jazz, the experience is definitely enhanced by flicking through your childhood drawings or Blumm’s recently published book of scetches. Let’s hope he and Fadda meet again soon.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: F.S. Blumm
Homepage: Ahornfelder Records