Music review: Karl Blau

By Logan Nickels, KJHK station manager and rotation DJ

Thursday, October 22, 2009

“Zebra.” Noun. An animal. Now, looking at that definition, you have just as much of an idea of where this album is coming from as Karl Blau did. In the first two tracks, you get acid jazz, folk rock, electronica and psychedelia, crammed into just a hair more than six minutes. All of that music in such a short space makes it hard to not only find the focus of an album, but the big picture is blurry as well. Though this album doesn’t demand your attention, it somehow draws you in. It doesn’t grab you by the shoulders and throw you straight into Blau’s world of off-kilter sanity, but instead it takes your hand and graciously invites you in.

All of the tracks have a comforting, thick bass line which walks around Blau’s friendly voice and makes it easy to get lost in his definition of an album. The underlying power of all of this music is that it’s very lo-fi, but feels so polished and smooth. All of the different styles and feelings combine in a way that seems simple, but is actually quite complicated. It seems as if Blau is asking the eternal question — is a zebra black with white stripes or white with black stripes? It appears that Blau’s Zebra is both.

While the stripes of this record are very different, very black and white, the stark differences found in the songs are so intrinsic to the album that you couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Verdict: 3 and a half stars

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