February 05, 2004

Kai Eckhardt's Honour Simplicity...

To the best of my knowledge, this album marks Kai Eckhardt's debut as a solo artist. I've been looking forwards to this cd for some time: It's almost always a good thing when an artist you respect steps out on his own. Having studied with Kai, I really wanted to like this album a lot -- I really did. But I just can't quite get there.

One of the things that I did like immediately is that the entire album is recorded in a single shot; no overdubs, no edits, nothing like that. At least according to the liner notes. (Yes, I'm one of those geeks that reads all of the liner notes either before I put the CD in or as I'm listening to the first song or two.)

Some highlights from the actual music itself:

  • Re-United -- This song has a real jazzy feel to it. Lots of nice rhythmic variation over the 9/8 sections, and the 4/4 breakdown towards the end of the tune was a welcome change of pace.
  • Captured Flow -- A solo bass tune (which is to be expected on a bass player's album). It's very nicely done. All of the high end was rolled off for some reason, though.
  • Queen of Cups -- A good tune. Kai uses a fretless for a nice sound.
  • Remember Yourself -- This song reminded me quite a bit of some of the work that Kai used to do with Trilok.

The rest of the music on this album seemed to be either overindulgent noodling or unremarkable jazz-ish tunes. Interesting to listen to for about two minutes, then wearing out it's welcome in pretty short order.

The hardest thing about this album actually buying it. When I went out to SF, I hunted around for the CD in the usual haunts but could never find a copy anywhere. I finally ordered it from the only website I where I could find it in early January, hoping that it would come before the Garaj Mahal show at the end of January. It didn't, so I ended up buying a copy at the show. The ordered CD arrived three days later.

Would I buy this album again? Perhaps. I don't think I would go through the hassle that this purchase was (ordering from the UK, etc), but I would consider picking it up if I happened across it one day at Tower.

Posted by Casper at February 5, 2004 10:56 AM
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