"Hands Up" by Hannes Lingens. There are 18 tracks on this album titled “Hands Up”and all of them would merit a deeper appraisal, in that they are all expressive, varied and never dull. However for the sake of brevity, I will limit myself to those tunes that most captured my imagination. The first track “Vanishing valts” is a disguised waltz in which a strict tempo rhythm is linked to an elusive melody that requires the listeners attention. “Ancora una volta” (the title is in Italian) recalls the poetic cinematograhpy of Nino Rota whilst the “Mikrokosmos Teil 1” , “Teil2” and “Teil 3” are like fragments of obscure poetry. In “Hey there! Are you a sailor” Lingens makes a brief and splendidly dreamlike excursion with guitarist Cristoph May who is also present on the surreal bluegrass number “Ja think I’m a cowboy?”where we wait from one moment to the next for the voice of Tom Waits. “Zwischen den Jahren” instead sees the accordionist interact in perfect harmony with saxophonist Martin Postegga in deveoping the sorrowful melody that characterises this tune. This young man (who at the time of recording in 2004 was 24 years old) is gifted with creativity, of his own poetic vision and something that never goes away, a correct amount of irony. In conclusion this is a very good work. Review by Renato Belardinelli |
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