When Osnabrueck musician Benjamin Gunther aka Lilly Legit got in touch with us last year with his prime cut of piano-based jazzy math rock, we were pretty stoked to say the least. Coming off the back of our premiere of Lilly Legit’s debut album last year there was talk, likes, upvotes, you know, lots of social media validation. As we said last year, Gunther’s music is ‘clean like jazz but lacks the prolonged improvisation or overtly technical discourses that might be typical of jazz pianists’.
This week, a year since his debut, Benjamin will release Spectrum, his sophomore effort with accompanying bass player Nils Weber. And it has us echoing the same sentiments. There’s upbeat melodious jazz in tracks like ‘Chai’ and ‘Spectrum’, drawing nice parallels with Asian piano-jazz favourites like Mouse On The Keys and jizue. There’s the gentle lounge vibes of ‘Ego Death’. There’s off-the-wall key changes in ‘Crumbled’. There’s rolling piano keys interwoven with soft vocal harmonies in ‘Green Hair, Golden Soul’. In all, Spectrum is stripped-back jazz, doing away with the virtuoso tropes to forge a sound that is melodic and very moving. It’s a strong second effort from a man doing it all on his own.
Spectrum will be released this Friday the 17th of March. You can pre-order the EP right now over at Lilly Legit’s bandcamp page. Let your senses guide you.