Matthias Frey - Onyx (GERM, 1982)

I'm back from holidays with a little warm-up album.  It's hard to get back to work after being so relaxed for a couple of weeks although a scan of the internet banking balances and credit card balances sure performs well as a cold shower wake-up to reality.

This album was available in the past, I realize, but because this artist is one of my all-time favourite German musicians, I wanted to make a clean new rip off an NM vinyl.  Everything he touched turned to gold-- recalling Toto Blanke, Wolfgang Dauner, etc.  At times he reminds me a lot of German Chick Corea with the very staccato style of piano playing, but his imagination can really run riot in some of these compositions, and he brings that typical European classical music sensitivity to everything he plays.

His mixing of progressive songwriting and chord changes with jazz is just about perfect in my opinion, plus, we get Trilok Gurtu on percussion here.  The earlier albums he did with cellist Wolfgang Tiepold were particularly expressive too (Ziyada, Colibry, Inversion).  Although I may be wrong, he also turned to new age style music later on, just like Chris Hinze (I never bothered to listen to any of the later stuff, the titles alone scared me off).

Others will know more about this than me, but have none of his early albums ever been released to CD?  If so, it's a horrible injustice.