Svaneborg Kardyb: Superkilen

Denmark's Svaneborg Kardyb, comprising keyboardist Nikotaj Svaneborg and drummer Jonas Kardyb, are in direct line of descent from Brooklyn's Benevento/Russo Duo, composed of keyboardist Marco Benevento and drummer Joe Russo, the second generation jam band who lit up the mid 2000s with psychedelic groove and whose Best Reason To Buy The Sun (Ropeadope, 2005) was the movement's highwater mark.

The Danish duo has its own personality. It is more jazzy, less psychedelic and more digitally enabled than its US forebears. But the bloodline is unmistakable. Check out "Superkilen" on the YouTube below, and follow the ancestral tree further back to Medeski Martin & Wood and beyond that into prehistory with Jimmy Smith.

Svaneborg Kardyb are also more moderate than Benevento Russo Duo, who liked nothing better than to go volcanic. And whereas it sometimes sounded like the Brooklyners ingested mescaline in mouthfuls as big as those Lenny Bruce used to enjoy, the Danes prefer to stay rational.

But Svaneborg Kardyb are on the right side of the barricades. Their 2024 album is named after the Superkilen Park in Copenhagen, which runs through one of most ethnically diverse areas of the city and is designed to promote positive relationships between the different communities who use it. The group has authenticity, without which all art is nothing. This undemanding but fun music can put a spring back in one's step when it is needed.

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