KUHN FU
KUHN FU
Stores of the American fast food chain “Waffle House” are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn’t matter if it’s stormy outside and cows are flying through the air. The Waffle House index has been measuring the impact of disasters in the USA since 2011:
Green = full menu – restaurant has full power, food unlimited, damage at worst limited.
Yellow = limited menu – no power, food availability is limited.
Red = restaurant closed – serious damage or flooding.
Translated to the free-spirited jazz rock of the band Kuhn Fu: the music on the new album Katastrofik Kink Machine jumps back and forth between green and red with enthusiasm and verve, leaving out the tepid middle.
There is something old-fashioned about the word jazz rock: music in which soulless virtuosity has replaced spirit and immediacy. However, the guitarist and composer Christian Achim Kühn plays jazz fevered by electric guitar with his band Kuhn Fu, in which the joy of playing and the fun of profound nonsense (and then also: the virtuosity) oozes out of every pore. Not least fun in the extreme: green and red, no yellow.
The first piece, no wonder it’s called Waffle House, surprises, as is always the case with this band. But in retrospect, it’s exactly what you would expect from the opener of an album called Katastrofik Kink Machine. Jazz that rocks, rock that feels as free as a jazz impro, but here in the form of a big band arrangement. In the first few seconds the plucked guitar, then wind instruments (clarinet/alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone) enter the picture, and Waffle House works its way jauntily from one level of escalation to the next. Repeatedly interrupted by improvised solo passages that balance nicely along the edge of the abyss.
According to Christian Achim Kühn, catastrophe and artificial intelligence are two themes of the album, as the title already suggests. The catastrophic quality always shines through in the music, even though there is no singing on Katastrofik Kink Machine. The album title was generated by AI, but the music, with all its liveliness and unpredictability, is unmistakably made by people: not least an agglomeration of the musicians‘ musical kinks. The seven pieces on Katastrofik Kink Machine are all very different and yet form a homogeneous whole. Quieter passages, which, if it weren’t for the constant jumping back and forth between different tempos and moods, almost seem like classically composed jazz (especially in Low and Slow), with score and all; elegiac-orchestral music (Grand False, Enigma), which is followed by psychedelic, free-spinning music (Kink). Or a kind of surreal rock ballad with a cartwheeling saxophone solo (Die ID).
Singing or reciting, as is usual with Kuhn Fu, is only done in one place on Katastrofik Kink Machine. At the beginning of the last track, Christian Kühn announces “something simple and charming” and in a way this promise fits the entire album. Katastrofik Kink Machine is the most relaxed Kuhn Fu record to date. Even though there are, once again, more compositional ideas compressed into a very small space than the listener can process on a first listen.
Christian Achim Kühn – guitar, composition
Frank Gratkowski – flute, alto flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, bass clarinet
John Dikeman – tenor saxophone
Sofia Salvo – baritone saxophone
Ziv Taubenfeld – bass clarinet
Esat Ekincioglu – bass
George Hadow – drums
