CD - Ajabu/Family Affair
This album is composed by refined groove rhythms, inclined to minimal influences, jazz scraps, live sounds inserted on substantial programmed sounds, and eclecticism that seem to be not unaware. Jens Loden knows what's what, and this is clear hearing the charming textures and the canniness used in mixing the different sources. Nevertheless he intentionally is not part of the game, because he doesn't share fully the house music old and new schemes, nor the atmospheric and inspired nu skool breaks syncopated shakes. So avoiding to embrace techno nor electro, he maintains the beats per minute lower, adding and subtracting elements, ideally relating himself with what has been distilled from the abstract and hip hop seasons. This process achieves good effects with some peaks of delicated experimentalism, but not being at the same time definitively persuasive of his own general artistic path.
Aurelio Cianciotta