Thomas Hass: Trio's & Beyond Lotus Energy

The packaging starts you thinking. There's a painting showing what looks like ectoplasm, or perhaps a space alien, playing two musical instruments at the same time, like Roland Kirk used to do. Then the cunning addition of an apostrophe in the Trios of the title, to render it meaningless, or perhaps abstract.

Inside there's a selfie shot from low down of a bearded Thomas Hass looking God-like and grim, alongside text explaining his music: "Trio's & Beyond is a musical concept where I can experience the 'spontaneous combustion' in various musical settings and explore the trio format in various forms."

It gets worse. "On this album I have tried letting a special mood that always has lived inside me unfold through nine different compositions. You could call it ballads or melancholic but I see it more like an inner canvas behind the different musical paintings."

Lotus Energy may give the game away. The lotus has great religious significance in the Orient.

So, is Hass a Zen Buddhist trying to propel the listener into a new state of awareness, perhaps even satori itself?

It's more than possible. Though the actual music is really quite accessible; no problem at all for anyone with prior experience of John Coltrane, the Dane's principal influence. Like Coltrane, he plays both tenor and soprano sax.

He also credits himself, along with Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, as having composed "Gimbo." Other numbers include "Bibo No Aozora, The Beauty Of A Blue Sky," by Japanese composer and acid house pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

All the rest are meandering originals, except for the closer. This is—believe it or not—Harold Arlen's "Come Rain Or Come Shine." It comes as quite a shock to hear a recognizable tune. But that's obviously part of guru Hass's fiendish plan.

Pretentious, moi?

Or to put it another way, "He's from Copenhagen."

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