Review of Hungarian composer vaghy’s album, granum

Image credit: Norbert Pandur Balogh

Théque Records signee vaghy’s new album, granum, is an admixture of varying emotions. A work born of creative impulse, an intuition if you will, it remains a cohesive totality without growing tiresome. Rather, new elements come and go, keeping things fresh without disturbing the consistency.

Stream / Download: vaghy – granum

The song ‘imago’ has an almost salsa-like swing, like a tango between black and white keys. They carry a passion, a fire, a lustful zest that gives the track its heart. Between audible clicks, the melodies spin and twirl on the hardwood floor the constant bass motif. Conversely, ‘fenestra’ is a more solemn track. Slow and gentle, it takes its time to progress, in no hurry to get anywhere finite. It is a meandering track that wanders around from one place to the next. Lush keys move with the tides of a low bass hum that interjects about halfway through the arrangement.

Tour Dates:

14 June – solo concerts in Hungary

Composer vaghy tells us how he made the project: The goal of the album was for the songs to be part of the whole. I saw a way to do this: if the album is recorded in one play. This happened. The disc was recorded on 05/23/2022 in one recording starting at 10:35. Preparing the album in my head and recording it required so much concentration. I couldn’t sit down to play the instrument for a month after. I wanted to show this with the granum album: the basis of every work is the seed planted in the head, which manifests through the fingers and becomes a whole musical unit. The musical material is 100% improvisation.”

Read our feature on vaghy‘s ‘Bite’ video

Listen here!