Thierfeldt – Madly, Sadly, Badly
From Thierfeldt – Dilettantischer Sentimentalismus
Released on MMR Records, 1986, Germany

It’s interesting to see that many of the posts we taged as « Floating » are related to music recorded around the years 1986-1987. What’s the point of pointing this out, you may ask ?Well, it seems that, if you take a look at Germany’s Jazz scene during this period, that many musicians who played in prog or fusion bands decided to give a lighter feel to their music… This assertion might not be worth much, it’s just an intuition, but we can’t deny that the arrival of synths like Yamaha’s DX-7, which have a more « pastel » palette of sounds, gave an overall warmer sounds to many synthetic jazz recordings.

Thierfeldt‘s only album perfectly illustrates what we’ve just wrote in this long introduction. Released in 1986 on a German label, Dilettantischer Sentimentalismus is recorded by musicians who used to play in prog-rock and jazz-rock bands, including Release Music Orchestra in the case of Wolfgang Thierfeldt. Add to this that Madly, Sadly, Badly features one of Poland’s most famous fusion musician, Zbigniew Namyslowski and you’ll get what we’re talking about…

on Madly, Sadly, Badly, a slow nagging pattern of drum and bass is the canvas for impressionist interventions from warm synths and saxophone. Pleasantly pared-down, this song is a musical equivalent to a minimalist picture of soft green hill, something like David Hockney‘s simplest work.