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CD Feature/ Mike Nielsen & Benjamin Dwyer: "Evolution"

  Tobias

„Good music does not like boundaries.“, Benjamin Dwyer claims in the liner notes to this CD, “It cannot really be contained by definitions or coralled into genres.” We agree. But quite possibly there is more at play behind the ingenious system of classifications, which “keeps the jazz nerds away from the classical nerds” than merely the need of shopkeepers to sell their stock. Genres give listeners safety and protection from confusion: If you always know what’s coming, you’ll never be disappointed.

Which is why this will be a hard album to swallow for some: Record labels will have to focus on new target groups, journalists will have to think up new categories, shop keepers will distribute CDs evenly between all of their thematic racks and listeners... well, they will have to do away with the certainty of safety. After all: What is music without the risk of being disappointed, other than a soft massage of the senses? With this in mind, it might surprise you that “Evolution” is not actually a pretentious intellectual experiment or a art for art’s sake. It is an almost romantic statement of two guitarists in search of a new language and a place, where references and musical quotes don’t add up to a complex amalgam, but something entirely its own. Sometimes, a lyrical melody will jump along a rocky harmonic path, then again a welcoming rhythm will be torpedoed by flaegeolet sounds and noise improvisations. “Four nocturnals” goes all the way from breathtaking silence to a “dark dance” of rough and splintered motives. And in the winding title track, all extremes come together in a meditatively meandering musical voyage. It's Jazz, it's Classical, it's Avantgarde and something entirely different altogether.

The production consciously stays away from the dreamy cathedral sound often heard on acoustic recordings – this is exactly what it sounds like, when two guitarists meet. Which means that as a listener you will have to find your own way through the maze, without excessive reverb guiding you. But then again, what is music without a little struggle? If you always know what’s coming, you’ll never be surprised.

Homepage: Benjamin Dwyer
Homepage: Mike Nielsen