Harmonious Thelonious
Cheapo Sounds
A pivotal figure in Duesseldorfs Salon Des Amateurs, Stefan Schwander has already amassed a remarkably rich musical reper-toire. Through his Harmonious Thelonious project, he has spent the past dozen years exploring the worlds of Pan-African, South Ameri-can and Middle Eastern rhythms in combination with a minimalistic electronic sound, distilling his very own groove from the point at which they converge. His new album - challengingly entitled "Cheapo Sounds" - sees Schwander move away from tried and trusted recipes. This musical reorientation starts with the fundamental approach to pro-duction: the entire record was created using a single instrument - the Monomachine - which lends a very physical sound to the 10 tracks fea-tured here. The polyrhythms of earlier works are no longer in the fore-ground, replaced by melodies and chords interwoven on a base frame of brittle, simplified beat constructs and rugged bass pulses.