Jan Klare - B.C. [Umland Records 036]

Soon to be released via Essen's ever active Umland Records label is "B.C.", presumably read: Before Corona, the latest eleven track album effort by alto sax player and composer Jan Klare. Recorded in November 2019 and somewhat re-evaluated by the artist throughout the first months of the COVID-19 shutdown and therefore branded with a beautiful artistic rendering of the virus cell not exactly blending in to an otherwise rural and peaceful naturalistic artwork / painting it seems like all of the solo sax executions featured on this longplay outing somewhat foreshadow the isolation and loneliness of the weeks and months yet to come at the time of recording, especially as they manage to make the specific acoustics of the empty rooms and basements they were captured in pretty much tangible, bringing up pictures of blank cellar walls and probably cheap, green'ish linoleum flooring, cold neon lights as well as uncovered conduits and tubing in one's mind. Cuts to check out for a first impression: the ever spiralling, highly dynamic "Key To Error" with its surprisingly violent percussive bursts, the super detailed and playful "Shaking Alianthus" as well as the hypermelancholia of the concluding "Then Forgetting". File under: isolation studies in sax.