- artist:FOR FREE HANDS
- featured artist:Hans Hartmann, Maurice de Martin, Vladimir Karparov, Andreas Brunn
- release year:2001
- country:Germany
- formats:CD (Compact Disc)
- record posted by:Akustik Art Kontakt
- label:LAIKA
FOLKER 05/02
FOR FREE HANDS Eastern Moods; (Laika Records 3510150.2)
Folk- as well as Jazz purists might frown upon it, but this is simply world music - contemporary but still rooted in the richness of hundreds of years old tradition.
Hans Hartmann playing the chapmanstick (a twelve string fret-board tapped with both hands - it’s ancestor being the bass-guitar), Andreas Brunn on guitar, Maurice de Martin on drums/percussion and Vladimir Karparov playing saxophone/flute, have built a quartet of truly ‘Free Hands’.
With everthing from jazz, rock, and funk, to gypsy, polka and bulgarian folk music, the four create, at times, a seductive and sensual sphere - at others a lively dancing world full of spirits and fantasies, exploring the abilities of their instruments all the time.
Just like it was with the duo Brunn/Hartmann, the music vibrates through sensitive melodic and rhythmic nuances of odd meters. It opens floating spaces where intense sounds spread or lively, effusive encounters take place. Thereby the contemporary and free elements, unfamiliar to some, melt with the seemingly exotic flair of eastern traditions. This is done in such a self-explanatory way, that you always feel an intimate familiarity. Steffen Basho Junghans