A mind-bending, eclectic and challenging sonic stream that doesn’t contain even a shred of pretentiousness, but is full of creativity, individuality, expressivity and outside of the box thinking. It surges forward with fierceness, groove and trickiness. An ambitious album that will appeal to fans of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, but also to fans of Squarepusher’s older work and of course to jazz aficionados who seek to explore new and exciting sonic territories.
[Release page] Saxophone layers twist, caress and roar, intermixing with cunning provocative basslines and dynamically ecstatic and intricate drumming. The electronic shades are subtle and spacey—stretching and blending in perfectly, adding a ghostly, elusive yet powerful quality to the music, making it otherworldly. The Kandinsky Effect‘s music is a rich and evocative celebration of color, texture and shape, much like the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky—the influential abstract painter whose surname was borrowed by the transatlantic band in order to reflect its collective nature.
Synesthesia is the sophomore album of The Kandinsky Effect—a cutting edge jazz power trio based in New York City and Paris, that breathes new life into electronic-influenced jazz. These are young yet experienced and skillful guys with diverse musical tastes, and together they play bold intense music. This potentially incendiary and wild encounter between jazz and electronic music had occurred many times before, and in some cases led to something refreshing and new. In the case of The Kandinsky Effect, it definitely led to something invigorating and original. It’s not just the electronic treatments they use that make their music glow, it’s also the way they play their instruments, the way they merge the abstraction of electronic music with the free spirit of jazz. It’s an album that requires attentive and repetitive listening sessions—only this way certain layers and manipulations will be revealed. Of course Synesthesia is not just a blend of jazz and electronic shades, the album slides beyond and brushes with rock, hazy dub-infused scents and more. The constant mood swings throughout the 49 minutes convey a lovely sense of organized chaos, and something tells me that hearing and seeing these guys live would be a mesmerizing experience.
Synesthesia is a mind-bending, eclectic and challenging sonic stream that doesn’t contain even a shred of pretentiousness, but is full of creativity, individuality, expressivity and outside of the box thinking. It surges forward with fierceness, groove and trickiness. An ambitious album that will appeal to fans of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, but also to fans of Squarepusher’s older work and of course to jazz aficionados who seek to explore new and exciting sonic territories. A fine example for the innovative and multicolored spirit of Cuneiform Records, and I have a feeling a harbinger of even more adventurous things to come from this trio. Just give it a bit of time to resonate.
Synesthesia is available on Cuneiform. [Release page | Bandcamp]
