Breathe - Afterward
After listening to Afterward only once I was left in astonishment. Karin Helmstaedt and Judith Engels’ harmonizing melodious vocals are solely breathtaking.
Breathe comprised of the singing duo Karin and Judith who play out of Berlin, Germany. Karin carries a Canadian flavour to Breathe being born in Canada and growing up in Kingston. Judith brings her multi-talented seasoned vocal arrangements. Studying in Classical voice and being a full time member of the Berlin Radio choir since 1998. Rainer Schnoes helped compose, arrange, record, produced the music, and plays the Keyboards and Piano. Other musicians that can be heard on Afterward are Elmar Krick on Sax, Ferdinand Seebach on Trombone, Erich Gramshammer on Guitar, Oliver Fach on Guitar, Denis Jabusch on Bass and Tilman Person on drums.
The album opens up with the song "Hooray". From the opening bars in the song my eyes widened and eyebrows went up in astonishment. Throughout the entire song the vocals are stunning leaving you with a tingling shiver that runs down your spine as you listen throughout the song. An inaudible piano is played mostly throughout the song. I find the piano helps to compliment the vocals, as the piano just lightly shadow the vocals throughout the song only to slightly appear more mostly at parts where the vocals break off. Towards the ending of the song, the vocals and piano gains strength for one last chorus section of the song.
"Lover and Lass" follows "Hooray", The song shows the cool house Jazz side of Breathe. The interesting part about this song is the lyrics are adopted from the love poem It Was A Lover And His Lass by William Shakespeare. There is a slight variation in lines from poem, in the line. Now you can listen to poets say this poem a million times but it will never compare to the way that Breathe represents and performs the song. The almost shadowed slower flamenco style acoustic guitar picking that is played throughout the song absorbs a large deal of my attention when I listen to the song.
Now I was surprised to hear the starting of "Sweetheart" because it starts off with a electric guitar solo. This song shows all the different sides of Breathe. The song then goes into a funk bass beat. The Harmonizing vocals are put on hold during this song and the lyrics are changed up a bit also. Thanks in part to this line “Did you have a nice time, Laughing at the fact that I am a nympho incognito.” Lyrics aside this song can be fully agreeable with the acceptable mixture of jazz, blues, soft rock and rock.
"Faerie" shares most of the same qualities as "Hooray" does. A Piano can be heard underneath the vocals of Karin And Judith. This song is a great example of Breathe playing their brand of cool jazz song. The song really brings forth the image of old style New York in a downstairs jazz house. The room fully filled with audience members, the room is faintly lit by the single candle that is placed in the middle of a white clothed two person round table. The room is lightly filled with cigarette smoke that is only being cut through by the vocalized lyrics that are being brought forth by Karin and Judith from the stage. The solo brass instrument that can be heard unquestionably brings this song together as a whole.
The title track "Afterward" finishes out the album. The ladies put forth their soulful voices for one last track and carryout this slow temp style of song. The vocals and piano helps to compliment each other to the fullest. Each orchestrates each other and they bring out the best in each other and carry each other until the ending of the song. The brass I found was a very nice added touch to the song.
You can purchase your copy of Afterward via their website from CDBaby or over on iTunes.
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