Aki Himanen and Aleksi Kinnunen return to Jazz-o-Tech for their new album „A Thing with Feathers“ featuring seven tracks exploring the contrasts and similarities between improvised jazz and machine-made techno. The Finnish duo landed on the label with last year‘s fantastic Dawn Drops EP after their debut album „Scapes 1“, which was inspired by generative music techniques and collective improv.
With Aki Himanen on trumpet and electronics and Aleksi Kinnunen on drums, the new album finds the pair again creating a synthesis of machinery and humanity and how they coexist. Each track starts as an exploration of electronics; a quest to find interesting moods and textures to build on. It was this same spirit of adventuring into the unknown that defined Miles Davis‘s ever-futuristic ‚Bitches Brew‘ – collaborative and hypnotic improvisation, not only between musicians but also with machines.
The sublime ‚Shining Shades‘ opens with a suspensory groove, floating drums and distant trumpet motifs that lead you into the darkness. ‚Butterfly Globe‘ is a more tender and spacious track as gentle trumpets ring out in melancholic fashion over loosely broken beats. The title track features Fiinnish jazz pianist Iiro Rantala**, who has long been associated with the wonderfully weird and visionary Töykeät trio. It is a track full of longing, with heartbroken piano keys and chords swelling to an overpowering crescendo of emotion. ‚Conflict Dance‘ has more signature trumpet motifs swilling about the mix, this time with sci-fi synths and turbulent drums heading into battle. ‚Lost In Balance‘ features Finnish jazz bassist Eero Tikkanen. It has a deeply hypnotic groove and a real sense of hope in the trumpets that soar above. ‚Resolution Of‘ ups the pace again, with rumbling bass and thunderous claps.
Aki and Aleksi: „The interesting part of this dialogue is that it’s always unpredictable and evolving – what’s coming out there is always a mystery for even us. That’s the magic of open-hearted spontaneous interaction. „A Thing With Feathers“ is an album full of mental landscapes so we encourage the listeners to visualize the album in their own minds and find their own journey through it. For us, the main theme of the album is hope and how we should never lose it. We don’t want to be too specific about it because it can mean plenty of things, but in a way, the hope is our guideline which goes through the whole album.”
