After taking inspiration from Anatolian music on his previous work Eastern Flowers, the Swede Sven Wunder looks toward the Far-East for his new album. Wabi Sabi borrows its name from an aesthetic and spiritual Japanese concept which involves an appreciation and cultivation of simple and modest things, the acceptance of imperfection in the world and respect for the passage of time. For all that, this record is no less luxurious. Jazz-rock rhythms wrapped in progressive and pulsating funk tinted with East-Asian sounds. Wabi Sabi features wah-wah guitars, bass, percussion, Wurlitzer piano and Moog synthesisers which flirt with Japanese shakuhachi bamboo flutes (Hanami, Blanket Fog Descends…), Chinese zithers, guzhengs, violins and marimba’s on Bamboo Rocks. The final North Wind Rattle the Leaves, which begins and ends with the sound of a tanpura points us towards India. Perhaps an indication of the composers next destination. © Benjamin MiNiMuM/Qobuz