Atrin Madani - Where Are We Now? (MP3-Download)

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Where are we now? Where do we stand now? This is what we ask ourselves in light of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, geopolitical upheaval, and the images of women in Iran taking to the streets in autumn 2022 to fight for their rights. Images that particularly concern Atrin Madani, the son of Iranian immigrants. Where are we now? This is also a question that every generation of jazz musicians must ask themselves anew. Madani, born in 1998, has found an answer for himself that is as clear and precise as his singing: What we need most right now is honesty. Humility. And quality. All of this can be found in abundance on the Berliner's debut album, "without East or West in front, without walls and borders in his mind," as the actor Hans-Jürgen Schatz once wrote about the singer.
Madani's debut album, "Where Are We Now?", is a single, grand declaration of love. It's about the magic that happens when words and melodies form narratives that simply won't leave your head. These structures are commonly called "songs." But when Madani sings them with his fabulous quartet, they become cinematic panoramas of the soul.
You can certainly hear the Schöneberg native's intensive study of predecessors like Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Andy Williams, and Tony Bennett. However, he honors the masters by not copying them, but rather confidently forging his own path. And that path doesn't lead through the scrap heaps of the Great American Songbook or through the pop charts of the recent past, which have been treated with a strained, postmodern wink. Drawing on the sound aesthetics of Norah Jones, Diana Krall, and Till Brönner, Madani instead dedicates himself to a hand-picked selection of songs that have largely remained unsung in jazz.
We're talking about the exquisite creations of the sophisticated singer/songwriter art of the 1970s, which, under the banner of "yacht rock," has recently enjoyed a remarkable comeback in clubs with compilation series like "Too Slow to Disco." These are songs that are tailor-made for Madani. Like Michael Franks and Donald Fagen, the two pillars of sophisticated Seventies pop-rock, the young Berliner possesses the rare gift of making enormously complex sounds as light as a feather.
But the story of “Where Are We Now?” also includes the deeply personal connection that the Millennial has to the songs of the Boomers – and in doing so, makes the supposedly insurmountable front lines between the generations seem obsolete.
"Everybody's Talkin'," for example, has haunted Madani since childhood. "My father is a total music freak, and we always played Harry Nilsson's version of the song with that weird nasal country voice," the singer says with a laugh. For their interpretation of the piece, made famous by the film "Midnight Cowboy," Madani, pianist Christian von der Goltz, guitarist Alexander Ruess, bassist Olaf Casimir, and drummer Tobias Backhaus were inspired by the hypnotic calypso groove that Ahmad Jamal used to give his hit "Poinciana" on the 1958 recording "Live at The Pershing."

01 Where Are We Now?
02 Things Behind The Sun
03 Everybody's Talkin'
04 Alone Again (Naturally)
05 Tempted
06 Maxine
07 Brooklyn
08 Fool On The Hill
09 Yellow