If one would ever wonder how a deserted, bleak but not bland, cityscape sounds like. Bohren’s, “Black Earth” is the answer. It might be the perfect soundtrack to the movie of You. If you ever wanted to wear a Fedora and ever play the part of private dick. Or secret lover. Or – just a plain old bad guy.

This is a record for those tired of highpitched BPM’s and formulaic, brainhemmorage-inducing lyrics. This is a record by a bunch of guys who grew tired of playing those grindcore guitars and took up jazz. Or maybe not. Maybe it still is death metal. With all its pace and characteristic instrumentation taken out of it, chained and slowed in order to be able to articulate itself. Perhaps, what Bohren plays, is the best damned death metal of all times. Full stop.

Bohren & Der Club of Gore, “Black Earth” at Spotify.
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore at Spotify – full listing.

The new Tomasz Stanko jazz album, Dark Eyes, seems to be performing exceedingly well. On the pop charts. The following piece of intriguing information is to be found on the ECM Records site:

“Tomasz Stanko’s newest recording “Dark Eyes” seems set to become one of the most popular recordings of the trumpeter’s long career. In his Polish homeland, it is already a major hit, soaring in the second week of release into the upper reaches of the pop charts. “Dark Eyes” is currently lodged at # 6, several positions ahead of, for instance, Barbra Streisand, Madonna and the late Michael Jackson.”

Surprising, to say the least, bearing in mind that its a jazz album. And not the watered down, overhyped, talkshow host-fuelled jazz of Melody Gardot. Dark eyes is by no means an easy listener, even if it lacks some of the more arcane moments of his past recordings.

Does this spring some new direction for the folk of Poland then? A country where the women are overwomenly and the men all look like thugs? One but dares to hope. The only thing that can be concluded with any level of statistical truth is that the cd-buying audience in the major Polish cities certainly seems to be far demanding than those in their European counterparts. Good enough, I suppose.

Tomasz Stanko at Last.FM
Tomasz Stanko’s “Dark Eyes” at Spotify
Tomasz Stankos Website (english version)
Background on “Dark Eyes” via ECM Records

Video of Esbjörn Svensson Trio, “From Gagarins point of view”.

Anyone aquainted with the term “jazz standard”, will of course know that a jazz standard is as far from a pop standard as it gets. The free element of jazz music makes every new version interesting and volatile, and the better ones excel at retaining the original structure of the composition while pulling the actual song apart into something new. Bill Evans version of “Autumn Leaves” will be nothing like Keith Jarrets.

Jazz standards are hard to accomplish. I believe that the above song, “From Gagarins point of view”, has every making of a future standard. And not only because of Esbjörns untimely and accidental death. I could of course explain it to you, take apart each phrase, tone and lay the composition out there for you. But why.

Just listen. Without making comments or zoning.

Just listen.

And if you need to, watch the subtle video above.

(Gagarins point of view at )