Super review by Cal Gibson, of The Secret Soul Society.

For the past twelve years Andreas Vingaard has been digging out a beautifully-curated selection of wide-ranging, long-lost, jazz-adjacent albums that all seem to effortlessly burrow their way into the darkest recesses of your listening psyche: his great ears and pristine detective skills ensuring that the Frederiksberg Records roster is right up there with the best of the reissue specialists. Music for aural connoisseurs, you might say.

Take a peek at the back catalogue and you’re going head to toe with the likes of Admas‘ wonderful Sons of Ethiopia, Roots‘ joyous township vibes, Karin Liungman and Ole Knudsen‘s skewiff Scandi-pop noir and Windsong‘s indie-soul a-go-go. It’s an astonishing collection of the good groove, pieced together with love and affection and served up to a world that doesn’t know what it’s been missing. There’s currently two more essential offerings in the pipeline: DJ Trebor‘s fantastic roots and culture throwdown Dffferent Style, and Green Cosmos‘ cosmically-inclined Morgenmusiken – you’ll be wanting to grab them both, for sure. 

Green Cosmos were four young German jazz cats from Marberg in the late 70s and Morgenmusiken is a simmering soul stew of elemental cosmic ornamentation, topped off with Nrayan Govande‘s slithering sitar runs. Michael Boxberger‘s sax takes the lead on Fools Of Paradise: Benny During‘s piano probing away underneath, Alfred and Ulrich Franke locked-in rhythmically on bass and drums. There’s space, and freedom, longing and nostalgia: childhood emotions recalled in tranquility, the eating of the apple and the coming of sin transfigured into fractured melodies and earnest musical endeavours: a post-midnight remembrance of times past and dreams unfulfilled.

Kalimba Walk is jaunty, cocksure – bass twirling around the titular steel tongue motifs, horn emerging slowly above the soundbed like a new day rising, beauty and truth caught in the moment and laid down for posterity. “Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life”, as the old proverb goes: this is music as spiritual practice, meaningful and meditative, stretching out to the cosmos and reaching in to the soul. How low can you go? Pretty damn low, it turns out. Wonderful stuff.

Island starts simply, pitches sliding freely, ghostly harmonics, bass plucks coalescing into a joyful whole. Music making from the tiniest foundations, quietness reconfigured as strength and resistance. Finally the horn joins and the musicians are, again, locked in, shacking out, wandering through a world that is too often characterised by harm and hurt: music as healing, music as love. It’s a timeless proposition and arguably one that underpins everything that gets written about on banbantonton. It’s a love thing, every time.

Kalimba Song plays us out and again the musicians are building towers of joy from tiny seedlings: the hope of youth and the determination to begin anew comes shining through. A remaking and remodelling of sound that comes carrying peace and serenity and joy for all. As another torrid year of hatred and war stumbles to a close we can only hope that somewhere, somehow, this human capacity for love and creation will eventually prevail. Morgenmusiken is the sound of hope, still echoing after all these years. Peace go with us all.

Green Cosmos’ Morgenmusiken can be ordered directly from Frederiksberg Records.