You might not know Norbert Kristof. He is Hungary’s #1 indie singer-songwriter. Ok, I know the this description doesn’t amount to high praise. He has tried to perform under different monikers with different bands but the most enduring is the solo stuff he does under his own name. This might be an indication of something. The unique and instantly recognizable sound of Norbi’s music should be appreciated. You could call him ‘emo’ because literally, he doesn’t make an effort to distance himself from the strenght basic emotions of love, hate, sadness, melancholy… You can either accuse him of being fake-naive for not equipping irony or you can accept it as a genuine expression of his soul or whatever. Either-or. This is ideology. What remains is the music. His influences include Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Explosions in the Sky, Sufjan Stevens and The Cure. And some cheesy popcultural stuff of the 80s and 90s. He usually records his music with Gergo, drummer of The Moog. Norbi’s sound is complex, it’s full of heavy guitars, sometimes they jingle, sometimes they break out like a tornado and sometimes they feel like they can cut you. There are experiments with sounds, effects and synths. The beauty of the melodies is undeniable, as is the film-like atmosphere of the songs. The main deal, the vocals totally support this: many-many types of storytelling voices emerge and fade away, all sounding in the foggy landscape of ‘the world of never’. These many shades were a struggle to develop but Norbi’s latest album is the strange senseless-making sense The World of Never We Are Forever is a major step. It’s a touching and insteresting trip: you can follow him through childhood, girls, hearts, hard times and happier moments…all gathered together for the intimate and personal music. This is it’s biggest strenght and weakness: strenght, because you rarely see someone with a capability to capture/create personal stuff this effectively. Weakness on the other hand, not because of some requirement of ‘distance’ or whatever but because it tries to impress too hard. Personal stuff is not for impressing a girl or an audience. You can choose to project a personal image but then you can’t appear to be aiming at a personal goal or the music and the personal atmosphere become just means to a not-too-unpredictable end and the listeners will feel like watching a reality show. I guess the music is still too selfish or something. Give Norbi some love on myspace and anyway you can download the whole album there. I just share the opening and hit-like song here. Strarting synth is amazing.

Norbert Kristof - Birth of a Railway Station [mediafire] // [ysi]

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under hungarian, singer-songwriter, album review, norbert kristof, indie.