Luxury of Mind by Flin van Hemmen

 

A maverick musician and a great instrumentalist Flin van Hemmen from Nijmegen, Netherlands is back with his new album ''Luxury of Mind''. 

With his diverse musical background and his goals as a musician, it's no wonder that we, as listeners, are getting somewhat of a derivative of this hard work but also an eloquent way of expressing himself as an artist. Eight tracks and each under six, five, four or three minutes is a nicely put framework of what Flin is translating here through his musical skills and flexibility as an artist.

Processed field recordings, choir work, electronic drone ambience and pomposity in terms of harmony and tonality which does this material a proper justice.

With all the features of accessibility as a music material and lightness that permeates throughout the whole album, it's only fair to say that there is a sense of light-weight spirituality undertones here as well as experimentation that is put into a very specific environment - field recording and electronics expressed  in a hauntological way through the compositional process and also through the way how van Hemmen understands the stylistical boundaries. All done in a highly eloquent way.

The whole album has a feel of a religious mass - through moods that are here but also through the climaxes on each track. 

It's a definitive point that makes me look forward to the next album.  

Whatever the circumstances may be, there are ways in which we can develop our creativity. Thus, Flin van Hemmen (born in Nijmegen, the Netherlands), embarked on this musical journey, switching from guitar to drums, from drums to piano, from piano to his home studio, realizing all are ways or tools in which we chisel away, looking for that bit of magic that we know is always around the corner. Flin thrived early in his career as a jazz drummer, touring and recording throughout Europe, playing with Michael Brecker and lesser-known gods. He moved to New York in 2008, where he’s been an active presence at the fringes of jazz and improv while experimenting with various percussive set-ups. In his trio, Casting Spells, he plays piano as well as the drums along with Todd Neufeld on acoustic guitar and Eivind Opsvik on the bass. Since 2015 he has delved into processing recorded material in the digital realm. And so he found himself creating with abandon, from home no less, a whole set of new 'tools' at his disposal, resulting in the most recent release You Can Know Where the Bombs Fell, for the illustrious Neither/Nor label. Recently this direction has also resulted in a new collaboration with Fender Rhodes wizard Jozef Dumoulin, by the name of Too Tall To Sing. 2020 inspired Flin to seek the outdoors (Central Park) as a setting in which music could be made with longstanding musical peer Sean Ali. 'Forest Music' played all four seasons and is about to repeat the feat. In all settings, Flin focuses on how harmony and melody can simultaneously create space for any variety of improvisation, field recordings and textures. Rather than one embellishing the other, they weave one tapestry. And so he finds that all the 'forms and tussles' inform one another, inspire directly or indirectly. 

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