Florian Hofer
Reaching
Graviton Music Services
2014
Florian Hofer is a young German guitarist who plays a rather cool blues rock, combo, rather impressively. He’s achieved quite an impressive result on his debut, at least in terms of an end product, with a smooth sexy sound production wise, mostly slow songs... a quite smokey but smooth voice, that doesn’t annoy at all, but would probably be on the throes of being likeable, if it weren’t for the ton of falsettos or “super air-y” moments, employed. While he pulls them off cooly, it’s a fake voice and over-relying on its use to “add” character to the compositions is just an easy way out of actually growing into a better singer altogether.
Still the album doesn’t have any huge deviations from a likable mean of a chilled out bluesy rock sound, unless it temporarily goes off the deep end for a more aggressive indie/rockier tune, “Let It Out” being a good example of that, or a more smothering achy acoustic number i.e. “Carrying” and it’s those moments that, sort of stand out a bit more, since they sort of break away a little from a more typical sound that Florian seems to explore for the majority of the rest of the album, with some exceptions.
Again, as I mentioned before, it’s a surprisingly mature and well “put together” debut and coming from a musician of only 25 years, it’s only commendable. It shows not only hard work, but also probably a true love for the genre that has led to an accumulation of the “best” aspects of the “past” masters of the genre, but then not some sterile attempt to replicate, what they did 20 years ago, ending up to sound like a bad clone of… “insert a favorite musician here” as way too many people try to do these days… aping/making careers out of marketing themselves as the new “this” or that. Instead, Hofer, genuinely distils the essence of what’s important and tries to write some good songs based on his love and enjoyment of music and that shows through. Enjoyed it and by all means you should check it out too.
Still the album doesn’t have any huge deviations from a likable mean of a chilled out bluesy rock sound, unless it temporarily goes off the deep end for a more aggressive indie/rockier tune, “Let It Out” being a good example of that, or a more smothering achy acoustic number i.e. “Carrying” and it’s those moments that, sort of stand out a bit more, since they sort of break away a little from a more typical sound that Florian seems to explore for the majority of the rest of the album, with some exceptions.
Again, as I mentioned before, it’s a surprisingly mature and well “put together” debut and coming from a musician of only 25 years, it’s only commendable. It shows not only hard work, but also probably a true love for the genre that has led to an accumulation of the “best” aspects of the “past” masters of the genre, but then not some sterile attempt to replicate, what they did 20 years ago, ending up to sound like a bad clone of… “insert a favorite musician here” as way too many people try to do these days… aping/making careers out of marketing themselves as the new “this” or that. Instead, Hofer, genuinely distils the essence of what’s important and tries to write some good songs based on his love and enjoyment of music and that shows through. Enjoyed it and by all means you should check it out too.