Kim Kristensen ‎– Aner (Denmark, 1990)

A beautiful cover painting indeed.  Note the credit on the back scan.

This is complex, gorgeously composed music with chamber instruments, mostly featuring acoustic piano but occasionally with electric guitar and synths.  Compositions are all by Mr. Kristensen, who, obviously, is the pianist.  Sparse information here.

The first track as a sample:





The similarity to classic Frenchman Thollot is unusual for a Scandinavian record, to be sure.

Note that he really changes it up nicely when he pulls out the synthesizer for the second side.  It's kind of one of those fabrications-- more acoustic on the first and synthetic on the second-- except that, to his credit, he doesn't follow that admittedly cliched script.

The complex almost atonal quality of it reminds me a bit of Michael Mantler's music, or any kind of later ECM, and in fact Kristensen played with the great Mantler later.  An earlier project called Ocean Fables I'll see if I can explore on a later post.