FUSK - Absurd Enthusiasm (2022)

After a good fifteen years one can speak of an institution. Kasper Tom Christiansen's quartet FUSK is a live band that brings together jazz history and the present in free improvisations at lightning speed. Sometimes it drives with blue lights, then again it catapults itself into weightless idylls. As if it couldn't be otherwise, it delivers a joyful swing with a conciseness that is unparalleled in terms of grip and refreshing.

This record is recorded like a concert. No overdubs, everything in the moment. And it radiates energy. Once again there is this eponymous absurd enthusiasm, which will not be dissuaded by anything or anyone from its cause. It's like sitting two meters away in a small jazz club that you always enjoy going to. The tension resulting from the musical events crackles and you listen spellbound. "At every concert he plays something I've never heard before," says Kasper Tom Christiansen about Rudi Mahall, and Tomasz Dabrowski is in no way inferior. And underneath drive and chisel bass and drums. It's a pleasure to hear that. It is filigree, playful, powerful and vehement, and yet it does not set any intellectual tasks, because it always progresses cheerfully through ten pieces, which always revolve around new ideas. The irony here is not a know-it-all, but a friendly one, and that's contagious. Everyone wants more than just navigating in the slipstream of the American grandees, but when Kasper Tom Christiansen uses twelve-tone techniques for his compositions, it doesn't come across as academic. Rather, it is unobtrusive proof that this is European music that does not simply appropriate a culture. Four musicians meet passionately and confidently at eye level. They don't have to captivate themselves in solos, instead they act in a fixed group context that is variable and stable. It's a pleasure to zoom forward as you listen to each individual, marveling at their feints and volts, only to then snap back into the big picture. This lightness is gigantic and wants to be further refined live. The flow doesn't stop because everyone knows exactly what's best for the band.