Artist: 7for4
Label: 57 Records
Released: 2001
Rating: 4.5/5
7for4 is definitely a name you don’t hear or read every day. What’s more, the guys never made a name for themselves even in their native Germany, which maybe isn’t all that surprising, since this is a pretty non-commercial genre; if we absolutely have to file them somewhere, the album would go in your home collection under jazz fusion. But that label, jazz fusion, is incredibly loose when it comes to 7for4 (the name comes from the term of the same name for tracks that contain elements of several genres, i.e. a 7 for 4 composition), because these musicians stop nowhere and for nobody – be it funk, jazz, metal, country or Latin music, they find inspiration in all of it and bring different styles into their work.
Their 2001 debut, Contact, was definitely something new, something fresh in Germany, which really has only a few great bands in this genre. The band fell victim to the prejudice that it would be just another krautrock outfit – since every other German progressive rock band is – and the assumption was even stronger because guitarist Wolfgang Zenk is a former member of the German krautrock/progressive metal band Sieges Even. 7for4 showed and proved to the early critics and skeptics the exact opposite – that they’re not just different, but that in their difference they’re also good, excellent, phenomenal. They were quickly branded a must-hear for every jazz fusion fan, for every lover of progressive rock and metal, among whom the “record” has also dug in for good; sadly, it didn’t spark a revolution among listeners of other genres.
Contact gets under the listener’s skin fast and stays there for a long time – every track brings something new. X-Dreams, for instance, is a great intro to the album and sets the stage just as it should – Markus Grützner takes the lead with a light opening melody on his fretless electric bass, which quickly grows into much more. Especially once Markus Froschmeier on keyboards and Wolfgang Zenk on electric guitar join in. Drummer Klaus Engl lays down an ambient mix of cymbals and drums. The song hits its peak when Zenk flips on a touch of distortion. That’s when his virtuosity shines through and answers the question of why he’s one of the most respected German guitarists. The rhythm gets a boost from Froschmeier with a psychedelic sound and from Engl with faster, heavier drumming. The rhythm swings hard: from a slow, dreamy jazz melody into fast, metal riffs. That kind of playing around fills most of the track, which ends right where it began – with Markus Grützner’s fretless bass. An incredibly emotional piece that makes us start wondering what else the Germans can possibly offer; luckily for us, the answer comes fast.
Next up is Tokamak, which completely changes the mood; it kicks off with psychedelic sounds from Zenk’s voice, followed by a roaring start where every single instrument chimes in. We quickly realize Zenk’s metal “roots” – heavy drums, virtuoso distorted guitar playing, sharp bass and low keyboard tones that, after the punchy opening, shift into some kind of wah-wah playing; that doesn’t last long before Zenk steps back into the spotlight with lightning-fast scale runs and later various riffs. Guitar and keyboards trade off and echo each other, and toward the end the track is led through its rhythm changes by the fantastic Zenk and Froschmeier. This time it’s Engl who finishes the composition with his intricate drumming.
La Provence, just like X-Dreams, starts out dreamy, with Engl lightly licking the cymbals and Froschmeier tapping out major-key keys, later joined by Zenk with a slow melody that practically forces us to close our eyes. Here and there each musician plays their part a little harder and faster to let the rock/metal side show through, but the song more or less delivers what’s written, just in a slightly louder and faster setting, where Zenk and his metal side get their moment. It’s interesting that we don’t hear Grützner hitting his five-string until the very end, when he gets a whole minute to himself. That’s where his experience from countless jazz fusion bands shows, accompanied by Froschmeier’s wild indulgence on the keyboards. The track ends with the two of them fading the moment out.
E-Gyptian is another pleasant surprise from the German oddballs; this time Zenk grabs a classical guitar in the intro and shows us that even Latin passages are no stranger to him. We quickly hear that this is a carefully produced affair, so the track is built in layers, with two guitars recorded – the classical and the electric trade places (Zenk plays the same lines with the Spanish sound of the classical guitar and then again with the unobtrusive distortion of the electric). The track unfolds in a similar manner, with both Markuses and Klaus playing fairly repetitive patterns and only rarely coming to the front, or rather only when the guitar goes completely quiet. Zenk’s well-thought-out Latin touches also close out this classic “7 for 4” approach to music.
Right in the absolute middle, at the highest point, awaits Highlands, which has everything that belongs to the middle, to that absolute and boundless peak – this is exactly where every member expressed all their genius, melded into one with their instrument and painted us a landscape of high hills, green forests and the blue serenity of the sky. If Zenk was hiding behind the distortion before, here he almost completely gives up artificial electronics and surrenders to the natural voice of the guitar. This is their track, the one where they left a piece of themselves, where the spirit of every player lives, where a singular moment of genius is captured. To describe the track any further in words would do an injustice to the music itself.
Rushian again serves up a dreamy classical guitar intro from Zenk, which soon morphs into a stylistically typical progressive metal number, and we also pick up some space rock elements – with Froschmeier having the most fingers in that pie, of course – until the track calms down and returns to the opening classical “guitar-ing” of Mozart’s namesake. After that comes a somewhat jazzier approach, but only briefly, before the metalhead Zenk steps back onto the scene. A spacy sound, new at this point, also wraps up Zenk’s soloing.
With so many genres already used up, the guys still haven’t run out of steam – this time the song called Rockalaxy starts out very blues-rock, with Zenk once again showing off his boundless abilities. But that rock’n’roll approach quickly unfolds into an epic union of instruments and virtuoso soloing from the former Sieges Even man, just as has happened throughout this album. Halfway through the track drifts into calmer waters, where of course it doesn’t stay long, the rhythm builds and the volume goes up; we catch the first hints of repetition, as if we’d heard this somewhere before. At the end Engl and Froschmeier give us a bit more, as for the first time in a while the guitar isn’t the loudest thing in the mix; it still closes out the track, though.
Just as that doubt starts gnawing at you, that it’s all going downhill or into repeating the earlier stuff, we hear a vocal. Stepping up to the mic is Greg Keller, who worked with Zenk in Sieges Even. It turns out the 7for4 guys can also play with room for a singer, who nails his part (the vocal strikes me as extremely “King Crimson-esque,” in the style of Greg Lake), though unfortunately (or fortunately?) the guitar once again goes full progressive metal, but the mood created is much darker than before.
The album ends on a fairytale note, with the 9th track. The guys wrap up pretty rock-heavy, once again moving from one volume to another, going from walking to running. Spacy keyboards appear throughout much of the track, and the guitar, for the first time in a long while, isn’t metal-oriented, while the bass and Grützner’s groove come out into the open again. We feel the cosmos, and the purpose of Subspace, as the closer of the record is called, is achieved.
It’s already clear from the descriptions that Zenk is the one in the spotlight, which makes some sense once we learn that he wrote all the songs. So the foundations rest on him, which is a bit of a shame, because if more room had been left for Grützner (who shines brilliantly in the moments where he actually gets a chance to maneuver) and Engl (a trained drummer with long experience), the record might not sound a little repetitive, and it would’ve been tinted even more with jazz fusion, which is what the album is screaming for.
With this hard-to-top debut, 7for4 set pretty high expectations for the future, and in their hometown of Munich new skeptics popped up, claiming the guys had already shown everything. Still, the record can be listened to again and again, you’ll gladly pick it up anytime, and surely there’s a track in there for everyone. With repeated and more attentive listening, we catch a huge number of musical elements that only confirm the talent (if you can call it that, since these musicians have experience and are recognized as excellent, at least in Germany). As was said right after release, the album is required listening for every musical gourmet, and recommended especially for those of you who have already enjoyed the fusion sounds of Liquid Tension Experiment and Liquid Trio Experiment.
Line-up
Wolfgang Zenk – guitar
Markus Grützner – bass guitar
Klaus Engl – drums
Markus Froschmeier – keyboards
Tracklist
1. X-Dreams
2. Tokamak
3. La Provence
4. E-Gyptian
5. Highlands
6. Rushian
7. Rockalaxy
8. Catking
9. Subspace Distortion
