NEW RELEASE – KNIMES TRIO

Three different nationalities speak one language of progressive jazz.

Better get to steppin’ because the sophomore effort of knimes acoustic group is available in a limited edition of 150 items. knimes is Dutch drummer Matthijs de Ridder and pt.1 is the follow-up to vinyl release Adventures In Improvised Music from 2021. This time, knimes limits himself to the trio and CD format.

At 37 minutes (more or less, more about this later…), it’s short but sweet. Good for us, we’re fed up with albums of 60 minutes or more that, well-intentioned they may be, leave us picking our noses in Poughkeepsie and staring into the cracks of the ceiling at a crawling spider and wondering why the roof the roof the roof is on fire while all that’s happened is our brain’s fried from being exposed to the music of Kenny G. at the tender age of 3 and a half. Short is fine, as long as the repertoire is strong, and the tunes by knimes likely will have your stamp of approval.

The trio goes modal, swings free and moves into territory that was pioneered long ago by the progressive jazz masters, presenting their own original and fervent take on it. They add a little turpentine over hotbeds of post-bop, create moods that work as the musical equivalent of film noir and make us hum along with an uplifting melody or two. The title of Andrew’s Hill suggests where part of the trio’s inspiration stems from.

The tight-knit playing of knimes trio, solid bass by Argentinian Ignacio Santoro mixing with De Ridder’s strong-willed drums, shouldn’t come as a surprise, since here’s a working group that leads many a jam session evening at café Bebop in Delft. Australia-born Hue Blanes is a capricious pianist with a strong toucher. Never extravagantly loud, accurate but flexible, he’s somewhat the star gymnast that suddenly strays from his program on the balance beam and improvises surprising sidesteps and jumps.

This little album sounds awfully good, likely the result of knimes being a producer as well. This holds true for the bonustrack, which reveals itself when the last notes and dancing spiders have passed away. It’s a hip blend of hip hop and jazz, which for the occasion, and in sync with the likes of The Philadelphia Experiment, we will dub The Hague Experiment in honor of the jazz hub where these cats ran into each other. Running time has been stretched to approximately 43 minutes, Standard Long Player Time, which fits this interesting ‘neo post-bop’ trio like a glove.