Menealos Tomasides & Achim Fink Projekt Teil 1

Menelaos Tomasides: Electronics, Achim Fink: Tenor Trumpet

Since 2016 Cologne-based electronic producer Menelaos Tomasides and his fellow countryman Achim Fink, known for his long-standing contribution to the German jazz-scene as a versatile wind instrument magician, synergize their musical emotions live.

Their formular is simple: Tomasides unwinds on his electronic devices pre-composed beats, grooves, chords and soundscapes, while Fink improvises on the magic with his instruments and enhances the soft tone of the bass or tenor trumpet with transpose, harmony, reverb, echo and loop effects. The gentleness of his play reminds likewise to the melancholic Nordic spheres of Nils Petter Molvaer and the big city tragic of Jazz legend Lee Morgan. Also, Tomasides joins the free-wheeling atmosphere and leaves the pre-sets behind for playful games with his Korg Electribe SX-1 Drum-Machine or his Microkorg Synthesizer. As both like sounds that thrill and demand, they use various analogue and digital effects to transmute their music into bewitching uncommon atmospheres, that go far beyond the usual categorization of ambient, techno, jazz and electronics.

Meanwhile, the foundation of Tomasides’s pre-composed sounds come from two samples CD’S called „My live with the Wave”, that the late Detroit house producer Mike Huckaby arranged on the Waldorf Wave Synthesizer. As his recordings originally been made for house music, the harmonics of „Menelaos Tomasides & Achim Fink Projekt“ get also deeply infected by a soft house veil.

The recordings that can be heard here, have been recorded live at Cologne’s new hot spot for jazz affairs King Georg. They feature an always enjoyable surprising musical conversation between to beings that oscillates between analogue synth deepness, genuinely felt trumpet emotions, soft kicking techno moments, playful ambient illusions and all that jazz.

Text:Michael Leuffen