MUSK AT DUSK

And finally Irmin releases an album full of actual songs, sung by his own voice! That's quite something, I mean, for those who like his voice, which for sure takes some getting used to. The guy has studied composition and conducting, so he should be well aware what kind of thing is expected of a serious professional singer. But what he does is something completely different. His voice is deep and full, and he doesn't care that much for hitting the notes, but for sure this voice has something. Well, he is more Tom Waits than Pavarotti. You can picture him like the old guy in the corner who has seen a lot and gives you his view on it, and life has left its traces. It's at the same time understated but also warm and can be emotional and even erotic.

And then the album is full of melodies and a number of them stays in your ears, starting with the cute piano melody of the single (and quite good at that) "Roll On Euphrates", which actually was written for another TV show, despite having announced this as an autonomous non-soundtrack album in my last review, sorry! The dreamy Great Escape also makes quite a lasting impression, the melody here solemn and slow, something for the small hours, contrasting with the nervous drums and percussion by Can's great Jaki Liebezeit and grandmaster Trilok Gurtu. The Child in History is another one of Irmin's great dynamic waltzes that run through many of his albums. In fact I could say that this is very great, at more than 8 minutes something for the prog lover, except that you may think there's enough stuff of this kind already on the Filmmusik albums, although the singing adds a particular flavour to this one. Irmin likes dance rhythms, and the album is started off by a tango, Cliff Into Silence, including bandoneon; Villa Wunderbar has a cha-cha type rhythm, I believe, even though not being an expert at that. I'm maybe not a fan of every single composition ("Love"?), but the instrumentalists are great throughout; there's Michael Karoli again besides Jaki and Trilok, and the occasional horn and sax as we know it from Irmin.

I hadn't listened to this for quite some time before writing this review and thought it would come out around 3.5 stars, but it is so original overall, has more memorable melodies than I thought (I must have put some of them on the wrong album in my memory), very enjoyable instrumental performances (hell, I could listen to any album that has Jaki drumming on it *or* Trilok Gurtu *or* Michael Karoli just for their performances), and I actually love the singing (not everyone will) so much that I eventually rate it 4.2 despite a somewhat limited prog coefficient (you could call it pretty arty art pop maybe).