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
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
