Two things stand out immediately about German keyboardist and composer Florian Ross’s first release for his own Toy Piano label.
First, it’s the compositions, closely written and harmonically nuanced, but spacious, upbeat and smile-inducing, reminiscent of the optimistic, wide-open plains strand in American jazz associated with composers such as Pat Metheny, Joel Harrison and Ben Allison.
The second is the instrumentation: country music more or less owns the pedal steel guitar, but polyglot guitarist Markus Segschneider imports the instrument’s characteristic twang into Ross’s tunes, mixing it with the leader’s synth-drenched chords, making a sound that is fresh yet timeless, strange yet somehow familiar, like the theme tune to a 1970s cop show you never saw.
