release date: Apr. 9, 1992
format: vinyl (COL 471614 1) / cd (COL 471614 2)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,88]
producer: Òli Poulsen
label: Columbia - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 1. "Prince of Peace" (4 / 5) - 2. "Glass Painting" - 3. "Queen of the Night" - 4. "A Time to Keep" - 5. "The Naked Facts" - 7. "Concrete Muse" - 8. "Capricorn" - 9. "Smile"
Studio solo album by Palle Mikkelborg following the collaboration album Hommage - Once Upon a Time (1990) made with N.H.Ø.P. All compositions are by Mikkelborg except "Smile" by Charles Chaplin. The album consists of nine tracks with a total running time just exceeding 51 minutes.
Stylewise, the album follows Mikkelborg's late 80s and 90s style of airy fusion / avant-garde jazz with focus on melody.
The album doesn't appear to have been met by great enthusiasm, but for me, it's a most wonderful and warm contemporary jazz album - perhaps much treasured because I actually purchased the album on its release. I have played the cd so many times that it ended up being impossible to play without tracks skipping or forcing my cd player to call it quits. Luckily, I managed to copy the content to FLAC format and thereby saving this splendid album.
Mikkelborg both dwells on near-ambient compositions and more fusion-like songs, e.g. "Glass Painting" with an ever-present influence from Miles Davis and his 80s albums: You're Under Arrest (Apr. 1985), Tutu (Sep. 1986), and Amandla (May 1989), but the overall sensation is still one of strong original coherency thanks to Mikkelborg's characteristic flugelhorn.
Highly recommended.
