Jonathan Segel - Superfluity

 Freeworld ‎(FREED5058)

Superfluity is a solo album by multi-instrumentalist and all-around music working man Jonathan Segel. Some of you know him form his old band Hieronymus Firebrain or as a long-time member of Camper Van Beethoven among other things. Lately he has been part of the Øresund Space Collective and has also played guitar and violin on the two latest Astral Magic albums. He's also one of the musicians on the brand-new Spirits Burning album. Superfluity was actually released on 2CD in the UK already in 2017 but Jonathan just regained the rights to release it digitally on Bandcamp so that's why this review was now relevant.

While reviewing Jonathan's latest album Outside Inside I was sort of wanting to have more songs with vocals and my wishes are granted on Superfluity. This is probably a bit more listener-friendly of the two. Overall the music is still as varied so you can find elements from experimental avant-garde to psychedelia and indie rock, folk, jazz and pop music. And yes, I even get some classical music vibes from time to time. There are 17 tracks in total so it would be too much to go through them all here. Most of the tracks are rather short but there are also three longer ones, the jam "Like Mercury, It Slips Through Your Fingers" (12:58), the very trippy and experimental Bandcamp bonus track "Phenomenon an On" and the beautiful "The Dying Stars" (16:25) that gets pretty far-out and jazzy/proggy later on... The very nice and melodic progressive title track "Superfluity" is also rather long at just over the eight-minute marker. Splendid! Jonathan is helped on vocals by Kelly Atkins, Sanna Olsson, on drums by Mattias Olsson, Chris Pedersen and Andreas Axelsson, bass on tracks 9 & 16 by Mats Burman and on trombone on tracks 11 & 14 by Stian Grimsta. There's a healthy balance in between written and improvised material to keep things interesting. Although this is rather massive release it can keep me listening intensely for the whole duration. The playing and production is excellent and the album sounds really good. Check it out yourself!

 www.jonathansegel.com