Joachim Kühn's
Sunshower, recorded for Atlantic in 1978, was recorded with a killer band that included über-guitarists
Jan Akkerman and
Ray Gomez, bassist Tony Newton, and drummer
Glenn Symmonds; it's full of key changes and a jumble of syncopations, with vocals from
Willie Dee.
Kühn had established a well-earned reputation as a top-flight jazz pianist and experimentalist for MPS in the late '60s and early '70s, but his trajectory slipped a little with this release.
Kühn's pianism is as elegant and sparkling as ever, but his compositions leave little room for anything remotely exciting to transpire; it's all a little too studied and refined, and it doesn't help that the only keys that matter are his use of a grand piano and a Fender Rhodes; his virtual array of Roland synths and string machines had already started to feel dated, even at the time. ~ Thom Jurek