The chameleon-like Hungarian, Vedres Csaba, offers a pair of recent releases showing two utterly distinct sides of his musical character. The first features him at the piano, accompanying his vocals with dramatic keyboard arrangements. Csaba has an astute compositional sense and it is difficult to pin influences on him. At the keys he dashes off brisk flashes of jazz harmonies and sonorities that might remind of Robert Godfrey or Keith Emerson. His ethos embraces jazz touches while his disciplined vocal ability constitutes an expressive capacity that rivals Peter Hammill. He mainly sings in Hungarian, but the melodic flair seems Italian. My only gripe is that these elegant songs cry out for bass/drums addition, to accentuate the dynamic peaks and lulls. Now Ephata I is another world. Here he presents an art damage electro-pop concept with a healthy slant towards the bizarre. The closest comparison would be to Vangelis’ horribly neglected See You Later LP, and his underlying message echoes the future shock of the mechanized society exemplified in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Again, he lends a jazzy edge to the songs. But especially in this context does it create a singular kind of tension, that almost makes a mockery of what the 80s gave us in techno music. The obvious mastery of timbral subtleties, and vast musical vocabulary evident everywhere, lift Ephata I to a level far beyond what Kraftwerk could ever do. Violin and symphonic-styled keyboards ornament the work in a way that appeals towards fans of more complex music. Csaba also delivers the best drum programming I have ever heard. Not the kind of work that anyone would love, but in its own genre there is no better example I can remember, than Ephata I.

Michael Ezzo