snobb Good news for everyone with a strong nostalgia for the melodic/melancholic side of EST's music - the fourth Tingvall Trio release is just honey for your soul! Recorded at the same studio in my beloved Italian Udine as their previous album (in 2009), this release is based on the same concept.

Nordic nu jazz roots (read - cool melancholic tunes with simplistic rhythms) are successfully melted with a warm Italian polished sound standard. As a result you have a strong collection of very accessible, even catchy in moments (but not memorable at all) compositions. You don't need to be a jazz fan to like this music (possibly it sounds a bit sarcastic, but it's even better - if you're not).

This current release is in fact nothing else but a repeat of the quite successful formula presented on this trio's previous album. No one expects experimentation or drastic direction changes from contemporary jazz artists, but on this release the musicians moved in an overly safe way. These are well composed songs that are pleasant and almost free of improvisation for the higher listener's comfort. the few post-bop inclusions sound more like useless attributes than natural components of sound.

Good jazz-related soundtrack for Nature's World series documentary, fits well for late summer evening dinner on the terrace.Even their previous album sounds really inventive and fresh comparing to this one. Hope trio's next work will contain more life and spices on it.

snobb Hamburg-based Tingvall Trio is well known around Germany and often is compared with EST.Such comparison has its ground - Trio's leader Martin Tingvall is Swedish pianist and his music is obviously influenced by Bobo Stenson and is full of Nordic aerial melancholy.

At the same time two other Trio's members bring quite different flavor to band's music - Jürgen Spiegel is a rock drummer from Bremen and Cuban bass player Omar Rodruguez Calvo brings warm and soulful southern breeze (more Mediterranean than Latin though).

Trio's third album was recorded at the ArteSuono studio in Italy, known by series recordings for ECM, so album's final sound is a combination of all above mentioned factors: catchy,warm,but with Nordic/ECM aerial feel, polished on Italian manner,but with some deep bass fragments, full of dreamy Fazioli grand piano music.

Strong contemporary jazz album by its sound could be placed somewhere in between of more energetic Hiromi's music and Leszek Mozdzer/Lars Danielsson beautiful Chopin/Pasadoble tunes.