A Forest Mighty Black - Mellowdramatic (Compost)

This has certainly been a good year for Munich's Compost Records, with class freakbeat releases from Beanfield and the Future Sound of Jazz series. One of the bands you'll find on that series are Freiberg's A Forest Mighty Black, whose latest LP is perfect space age bachelor pad music. 'Duel With A So(u)l' and 'Tides' are typical of the band, pure Sunday afternoon funk for the beat(en) generation. It's drum and bass, but in most cases the bass comes courtesy of a jazzy double-bass sample and the drums are laid back smoky jazz room style and take second place to the thematic melodies. 'Everything' has a samba feel in places and spy-theme camp in others. A track that would be perfectly placed pouring out of some of the more switched on coffee bars around Europe.
AFMB's recent remix work for the likes of the Freakniks, Mindstore and the Far Out and 360degrees labels has poured more into their melting pot, like the analogue riff that underpins 'Duo Trippin'', a track which later ducks out into a sitar breakdown. Then there's the one-minute pure drum & bass burst of thought that is 'The 9 To 5 (Is Killing Me)'. How many of us can relate to that? In Mellowdramatic, A Forest Mighty Black serve up a rich, dark gateaux of texture and taste. And provide me with a pun I just couldn't help but put in print!
The closing tracks 'Rebirth' and 'Til The End' consolidate A Forest Mighty Black main-man Bern Kunz's vision of end-of millennium jazz. The future sound of jazz starts here. This is going to be a slightly difficult album to seek out but would be well worth the effort. 9/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine