Nonkeen ★★★★
All Good?
LEITER. DL/LP
Nils Frahm-led avant-garde trio reunite to pay homage to possibly fictitious jazz fusionist ‘Herbert Laser’.
Nonkeen debuted in 2016, but their history stretches back to school in the late ’80s and, they maintain, a shared admiration for cult electronic jazz pioneer Herbert Laser. Worlds away from Frahm’s day job as ambient piano king, All Good? Andy Cowan taps deep into Laser’s experimental ‘Laserjazz’ mindset, a cosmic tussle between Frederic Gmeiner’s skittering beats, Sebastian Singwald’s staccato bass lines and lapping waves of synths, offset with more reflective organ and Rhodes. While Frahm’s sorrowful tinkering on That Love and Will Never builds into a sustained wash on Product, Mark is a rhythmic exercise in palpitating atmospherics that lets Gmeiner escape his leash. A little arch at times (the song titles combine to form supposed old Laser quotes, including punctuation), its 64 minutes are as distinct and diverting as its inspiration.