Joachim Kühn 
Sound of Feelings

★★★½

Yeah I've been listening to a lot of jazz lately, but that's just how I've been feeling. And the BYG label has been out of my listening schedule for a while. Joachim shows up to the BYG party strong too; channeling Coltrane and Ayler in the most European fashion. While it works most of the time, it gets a little weird here.

The first two tracks, especially "Scandal", swing for the most part. Nothing too challenging or "BYG" about it. Although like most sessions on this label, the quality is pretty rough; everything sounds a bit too thin and metallic. Joachim's piano playing is pretty McCoyish for the most part, and he'll draw from Cecil Taylor later too. The song "Wester Meaning" is the first wild track on here, as Joachim switches over to saxophone for a bit. And around the seven minute mark, he performs a piano version of a section of "The Ecstasy of Gold". 

That Cecil is displayed a tad cheaply on "Gaby Love", which feels at many points more like a Glenn Gould knockoff than a free jazz musician. Then the longest track on here, "El Dorado", is really strange. Shifting from some Keith Jarrett on steroids vocalizations that really made me uncomfortable, all the way to another Morricone motif ripoff. It's all over the place and makes absolutely no sense. "In the Middle of the Way" increases this insanity with his Ayler impersonation and the endless drumming of Aldo Romano, Joachim even breaks into this sort of Pharaoh Sanders or Don Cherry spiritual chanting.

This album does end really peacefully with the Coltrane composition, "Wellcome", which is as calm as Joachim gets on here. It's a great closer and really hits you with this nostalgia, probably because of the borrowing from the song everyone knows: Happy Birthday. This is a BYG actuel album for sure, it's wild and unnatural but beautiful in its own way.

Favorite Song: Wester Meaning

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