Multi-instrumentalist,
Robin Taylor is back to take you into Taylor’s Universe. It is quite a few of
the same folks with Karsten Vogel on sax and bass clarinet, Klaus Thrane on
drums but also some new blood with Thomas Ulstrup on synthesizer solos and
Claus Bøhling on guitar solos, with Robin playing everything else you hear,
except Louise Nippers voice on Red Afternoon. This is the first new records
from Claus Bøhling since his work with my band, the Øresund Space Collective
and I have to say he is still in top form! This album was recorded between May
and October 2013, so they put it out weeks after finishing it! The CD begins with the long and moody track,
Buildings, which features a number of solos by all those involved. The end gets
really freaky before coming back to a normal sound and beautiful outro solo by
Karsten. The synth solo prior to the freaky section had a really cool sound.
Red Afternoon is next and starts right off with the dreamy voice and keyboard
and bass before the others join in. This is a pretty cool track with a really
slow pace and just drifing bass that I like. Great balance between heavy and
lightness. Claus plays a killer solo at the end of this track. Great wah
guitar! Marie Marolle has a mysterious theme, almost like it should be in a
Dario Argento movie but then it really changes when Claus kicks in around 2½
mins. They return to the strange theme that it started with eventually. Karsten
comes in later than on the other tracks. Forever and a Day features a lot of
great guitar and synths solos and they just trade back and forth over a good
portion of the song. Karsten is playing a much smaller role in this track. For
those of you out there that are not familiar with Taylor’s Universe it is
basically an instrumental jazz rock outfit with a bit more improvised flavour
than Robin’s other work. Robin composes, arranges and produces all this records
but he leaves a lot of space for all the other players and actually rarely is
the one taking the lead, except on the bass on this CD, even though he also
plays guitar, keyboards, flute and percussion and other things you can hear. I
like this stuff a lot…
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