''If we could count the falling stars as we have done before'': Jan Bang delivers his first vocals based solo album since the late-1990s. Co-produced by Erik Honoré who with Bang runs the live sampling/live remixing Punkt festival in Kristiansand and who provides lyrics to the tunes of the composer, singer and producer, Bang. We liked poignant elegy 'Delia' among the best of what's here, a luminous transformation of a traditional song interpreted by Harry Belafonte (it's a song that goes even further back to the 1930s) included on 1954's Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites. The ballad is sung on Reading the Air with Bang in duo with singer Benedikte Kløw Askedalen. And also a strong forté of the album, closer 'No Paradise Lost,' is appealing. Trigger alert for those of a sensitive disposition, it's not a jazz album really. But it is relatable to a serious non-purist jazz listenership (a rumbling purism being the San Andreas fault line of so many strictly jazz only fans). And given the calibre of the musicianship and the timbral electronica fascination in the production sonics plus the quality of Bang's vocals kept making us think to pop and chart stuff. You, guaranteed, craving more context, even delving back into the 1980s, will come to what Bang does tonally as a singer with your own jumping off points, which is healthy, verging even more into the realms of Sylvian-esque art pop than the Human League 'Together in Electric Dreams' universe.
Tags: Reviews