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NIELS LAN DOKY - River Of Time

Inner Adventures - IA002

Niels Lan Doky - piano, keys, glock,percussion; Tobias Dall - bass; Niclas Bardeleben - drums 

Lan Doky has a prodigius reputation, built over 40 years between  the heart of the Danish jazz scene and the fiercely competitive New York jazz world, and his list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of the elite players from Europe and the USA. This record is part of a strategy to ‘ consciously cultivate  his Nordic side’, which seems to mean prioritising a predilection for melody and melancholy. With its jaunty melody overdubbed with tinkling glockenspiel ‘Pink Buddah’ actually sounds closer to the breezy jazz-lite of Pat Metheny, until Lan Doky unleashes his fearsome chops in the brief solo section, and the uncharitable might find that ballads like ‘River Of Time’  veer dangerously close to  lounge music. The rollicking, bluesy ’Greasy Sauce’ has more bite, and Lan Doky’s power and precision are unmistakeable and are matched by his accompanists   ‘Sita’s Sauce’ shows what they can do with a ballad if there’s a little more heft to the compositional content, the gospelly ‘Are You Coming With Me’ manages to combine accessible tambo-slapping funk with a truly dazzling display of pianistic virtuosity, and ‘Houellebecq’ celebrates the gloomy French controversialist with some suitably robustly edgy jamming. The album also contains a selection of radio edits of many of the tracks so we can assume that Lan Doky has his eye firmly on the commercial prize and after all, he’s earned it.

Reviewed by Eddie Myer

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