By now, and after listening to “Every Woman is a Tree”, “Epileptical West” and “By Way of Deception”, you certainly identified what makes Angles’ music so unique: Martin Kuchen’s band plays a sad melody like if it’s an epical hymn. With the original sextet turned to a nonet, there’s even more bravado. This is political music without lyrics, music with an attitude and a message, and it tells us about human suffering due to wrong decisions by powers and interests worldwide.
Kuchen could deal only with the suffering, in the Romantic way established in music since the 19th century, but he chooses to transform sadness into rage and will to change, and what would be simple ballads or blues songs into something that sounds as bright and colorful as an opera or a symphony, but with a groovy feeling. The words are in the emotional expression of all the instruments and it really seems they talk to you, thanks to the extraordinary skills of the musicians involved in this LP (the second vinyl recording released by Clean Feed), the crème de la crème of the Nordic scene. Angles 9 is the European equivalent to Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra: a punch in your conscience.