Humble Grumble - 30 Years Kolinda (2005)

Crazed jazzy and avant-proggy Belgian ensemble Humble Grumble seem "Zappa-esque" in their meld of anything-goes music and sometimes outrageous, sometimes incongruously dark lyrics, but the roots of the band are on the somewhat folkier side. Hungarian singer/guitarist Gabor "Humble" Vörös wandered around Europe before settling in the Ghent, Belgium area in 1993. He participated in a number of musical projects, including a somewhat oddball folk-rock outfit named Dearest Companion, also featuring multi-instrumentalist Tom Theuns. Vörös (on guitar and vocals) and Theuns (on bass) formed Humble Grumble in 1996, and a quintet version of the group toured Switzerland and Germany and recorded a pair of demos that year, The Golden Pile and The Tom and Gabor Special. (Singer/guitarist David Bovée was another member of Dearest Companion, and Bovée later went on to form Think of One, whose debut disc, 1998's Juggernaut, featured appearances by Humble Grumble's musicians.) Theuns would soon depart the group, however, to form Ambrozijn with violinist Wouter Van Den Abeele, and Humble Grumble largely became a vehicle for realizing whatever ideas might spring from Vörös' imagination.

After the privately released Dreamwavepatterns in 2000 and Rockstar in 2004, Humble Grumble issued 30 Years Kolinda on the Pan Records label in 2005. Vörös had become enamored of the music of Hungarian folk outfit Kolinda, and embarked on the 30 Years Kolinda project and album after meeting group mainstay Peter Dabasi in Budapest. To mark Kolinda's 30th anniversary, Vörös invited Dabasi to perform live with Humble Grumble, and, aside from one track, the associated 30 Years Kolinda album featured Dabasi compositions exclusively. The album also marked the arrival of several musicians who would remain key members of Humble Grumble in the future: saxophonist Pol Mareen, clarinetist Pedro Guridi, and bassist Jouni Isoherranen.

~ Dave Lynch, All Music