Swiss pianist Luzius Schuler has created another vibrant album of hybrid electronic jazz piano music on his second solo LP, Penta Fest. Every bit as enchanting as his debut (Moon Is the Oldest TV), the album combines an inspired turn on the elements of mid-20th Century piano standards with pitch augmented electronics implements to instigate a weightless kind of intrigue and interplay between melodically percussive motifs. Sometimes it sounds like Luzius is playing along with the wind as it tickles the pendulums of a crystal chandelier, at other intervals, it appears that his upright piano is dueting with the fusible slosh of an oil drum half filled with perfume and seasoned with salt from the Dead Sea. "Tidamtidam" in particular, has a soporific aura to its hallowed twirl while manifesting a deliberate and productive rhythmic exchange, and the superb "Crab Bay" binds an elevated piano melody to lofi and spacy hip-hop beats in a soft-focus shaping of mood in a setting of consecrated contemplation and meditation. Tradition and transition entwined in a singular circuit of harmonized evolution.
