CTW has fought Christmas, illness, the New Year, more illness and extreme laziness to bring you today's recommendation, Kurz und Klein, so stop complaining at the back there. Yes, you.
This five-track e.p. on Broque.de netlabel should appeal to jazz, swing, funk, big-beat and electronica lovers. The proof: a quick early morning blast of Kurz und Klein transformed CTW from a drooling, stained-underpant-wearing, bed-head victim into a zoot-suited, fedora-snapping hipster on his way to booty town with the funking ladies from across the street. Whether I changed my underpants I shall leave to your imagination.
The person responsible for my transformation, Nils Hoffmann, comes from Hamburg, and is a music teacher, concertmaster, chamber music composer, rock band member, a lover of all kinds of music and, all in all, is perilously close to being a Renaissance man. He is talented. I therefore hate him and love his music.
Sweet Man Like Me is a remix of St James Infirmary, a Dixie-blues standard made famous by Louis Armstrong, which Mr Hoffmann introduces to the 21st century with a shuffling beat and sampled chops and cuts. Is that Satchmo's trumpet slipping in and out? He would have loved this, I'm sure.
Next up is Goodbye Glamour, a superb remix of Candy Shop by Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. It swings, it jazzes, it combines violin solos with scat vocals, it stops, it starts, it's ridiculously catchy...am I getting through?
Track 3 is the over-promoted Texan in the foreign policy committee. Popmusik is a minimalist pseudo-Kraftwerk dance number that has absolutely nothing in common with the other tracks save for a joy in the making of music. The deadpan vocal is a winner. I like it.
Cry Swing makes me cry for mama. The first time you hear it you realise you are briefly the centre of global cool. Many different minimalist elements weave around a so-idiotic-it's-genius jazz guitar riff, to which Herr Hoffmann adds synth stabs, chopped vocals and ingenious bridges that will make electronica fans throw their fedoras in the air. Distorted background strings and a bit-crushed synth sweep add to the fun. Halfway through, we're hit with a bassline that will be familiar to MGM pith-helmeted explorers hacking their way through the jungles and ruins of dastardly Johnny Foreigner circa 1935. But what makes the track is the timing - the whole e.p. is hypnotically rhythmic, but Cry Swing is syncopation in excelsis.
Old joke: An explorer, his guide and various luggage-carriers are lumbering through the jungle. They refuse to be unnerved by the tribal drums that have beat unceasingly for the past three days. Suddenly, there is silence and everyone but the explorer and his guide run away in terror.
"Whatever's the matter?" asks the explorer.
"It's the bass solo next," replies the guide.
(At this point I should insert a Paypal icon so I can reap some reward for the ripple of uncontrollable laughter I've sent around the globe. But I'm too nice.)
Why Don't You Do Disco is a moody, clever piece that slowly reveals itself to be a reworking of Peggy Lee's jazz/blues standard Why Don't You Do Right. Her voice and a jangly piano spookily emerge amongst a driving rhythm and countless electronica clicks and cuts, as though a ghost has successfully wormed its way through your electronica collection. Excellent.
No, I'm not sure about the cover either. You can't have everything, can you?
Nils Hoffmann - Kurz und Klein e.p. (link to zipped album and individual mp3s.)
If you get addicted to Kurz und Klein and you simply must have more Hoffmann musical heroin then visit Nils Hoffmann's own website and bask in his talent.
P.S. I don't really hate him, you know. It's called humour.