Jazz music can, to us outsiders at least, sound ornate and complex, dense and impenetrable. And whilst that may or may not be true, this view has come about through people’s encounters with the music which lies at the more extreme end of the spectrum. Marius Billgobenson makes music about as far away from that as you can get and still be loosely in the same genre.
Like Tribes In Mind before it, Let Me Know owes as much to world music in general as it does to jazz specifically and the African heartlands of Marius’ birth echo as richly within the song as the urban vibes of Stockholm, the city that he now calls home.
It is a gentle and sensitive piece and you get the sense that this is the personality of the artist being channelled into song rather than the usual act or artifice that is rife in the pop world. For pop, this is too, on grounds of its sweetness and accessibility, relatability and understated infectiousness. Jazz in Pop clothing? How great is that?
Woodwind underlines and accentuates, strings ebb and flow and acoustic guitars are gently strummed. And at the heart of it is Marius’ sweet voice and gorgeous sentiments. Let Me Know is a song full of heart and honesty, intimacy and vulnerability, devotion and longing. A love song in every sense of the word.
