Careful, terrible pun: who would have thought grumpy music could be such good fun? Most likely the creator of Harmonious Thelonious himself, the Düsseldorf producer Stefan Schwander, who years ago set out under this name to bring together African rhythms and a kind of Rhineland electronic cheer. This time, though, the story has developed a slight crack, beginning with the title Grumpy Pieces, which can certainly be read as a comment on the general state of things.
Yet Schwander does not translate the madness of the present into angry noise or anything similarly direct, insofar as music can do that at all. A faint darkening can nevertheless be heard here. Not in the groove – that remains pleasingly polyrhythmic, dense and knotty – but rather in the occasional slightly distorted synth tone, in melodies that sometimes meander almost desperately in search of the right direction.
One should not overdo the interpretative projection, but one thing is clear: the party to which Harmonious Thelonious still feels committed shows the occasional crack on this record. Quite literally so in the closing track »Dissolving«, whose stuttering beat at one point seems ready to collapse altogether. Then it pulls itself
Related Features
