Sven Wunder
Eastern Flowers
scum stats: original pressing with Polish text on cover limited to 300 copies, 2nd pressing 300 copies with text in English, third pressing probably a couple thousand copies
Damn I've been waiting for this thing to arrive for weeks. Overseas shipping times right now are no joke. Wait...or they are a joke? I guess either euphemism works here. What I'm trying to say is...six weeks delivery time is LOOOONG compared to what I'm used to.
Had been digging on these tunes for at least that long but there was a brief moment where no one had copies and folks were kinda freaking out. So easy to get caught up in the hype, but this is an instance where the tunes hold up.
I've seen just about every type of genre used to describe this and can't disagree with any of them. Jazz, funk, psych, Eastern, folk, soul, world, country...I'd say it's fair to say "Eastern Flowers" is everything and nothing at the same time. And every song an instrumental titled after a flower....smooth as the other side of the pillow.
There's rumbling murmurs that this is a "fake" band or made up and I can't really tell one way or another. Appears that the folks at the estimable imprint Timmion have some involvement, but whether Sven is a person or a band, real or invented I cannot tell. I WISH I could say I don't care...but it's intriguing and I WANT to know. But, you know, I don't wanna try too hard figuring it out.
Sven's next album "Wabi Sabi" is already cued up and slowly making its way out there. Feel pretty confident from what I've heard that it's just as reliable as the tunes here. Stuff is getting hyped...and it feels warranted. Dig.
Green Onions by Booker T., Hawaii 5 O by the Ventures and The Silencers cover of the Peter Gunn Theme still rock my boat!
I like instrumentals and was just thinking about what are the greatest instrumental songs of all time when I saw this post by Blackwell. I do like the sound of this. As for the greatest instrumentals it depends on how broad you want to define it. If you include Jazz (which I guess should probably be a separate category since most of jazz is instrumentals) you would have to put Miles Davis near the top. There are some really good movie themes (Third Man Theme) and pop/rock hits that charted well in the instrumental category (Grazing in the grass). What is your favorite instrumental tracks? Outside of Miles I would say my #1 instrumental is Rise by Herb Albert, a #1 for Herb and sampled on another #1 hit by The Notorious B.I.G.