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1.
The Cup 03:24
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2.
Insane in Rome 04:29
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3.
Little Girl Dark Hair 03:54
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4.
Waves 03:29
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5.
Fluctuation 02:32
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6.
Dada Rock 02:10
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7.
Illicit 02:34
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8.
Shirley Valentine 03:56
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9.
Why This Sure Ain't Heaven 03:28
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10.
Venera in the Bath 02:42
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11.
Shroud the Sun 04:04
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12.
Berlin Beat Verlaine 02:25
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about

"Polish musician, songwriter and poet A.J. Kaufmann is a prolific artist. Kaufi is no longer his most recent album, but having been released in March it’s still a pretty fresh set of A.J.’s lo-fi Psych songs. Tunes like The Cup and Insane In Rome feature A.J.’s trademark brand of lo-fi Psychedelic Folk-Pop. The music is characterized by strumming acoustic guitar with an underlying electric acid burn and A.J.’s spirited vocals. Ditto for Illicit, which is embellished with a dash of West Coast Psych in the guitar solo. I like the combination of strumming acoustic and bouncy wah’d Psych guitar licks on songs like Little Girl Dark Hair and Berlin Beat Verlaine, as well as the uplifting and Psychedelically dreamy Shroud The Sun. There’s an aura of James Bond soundtrack danger to the dirty Psych rocking Waves. Dig that manic guitar. A.J. explores his inner Lou Reed on Fluctuation, and the spirit of Syd Barrett is alive and well on Venera In The Bath. A.J. goes balls-to-the-walls high energy on the Acid-Folk rock ‘n’ rolling Dada Rock. I like the trippy flower-power vibe on Shirley Valentine. And I dig the oddball feel of all the freaky alien effects that punctuate Why This Sure Ain’t Heaven." (Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations).

"Kaufmann, you crazed bastard, how do you do it again? I mistake you for going synth-pop and Krautrock and then I start thinking you ate more acid than I have which is probably accountable for an entire years’ worth of tree-hugging. This psychedelic folk/rock is the kind of typhoon turbulence that takes down Jefferson Airplanes. Makes Jerry Garcia truly Gratefully Dead. It's the kind of street poetry that closes all The Doors and shuts down Love Street like New Orleans for Mardi Gras. A.J. is like Allen Ginsberg with a fetish for sound instead of young boys. A.J. is just hitting his stride, though he has more albums, side projects, noise projects and books of stunning poetry than it becomes almost incomprehensible for an artist to be so prolific. It’s also almost impossible for another artist to not be envious and seek Cocteau’s “Blood of the Poet.” A.J. has managed to make Krautrock, a form of music virtually alien in the United States very accessible with his work with his band Sauer Adler, but now he is back to his original form of the simplicity of guitar and vocals, which I can’t help but believe is his most natural animal. A track like BERLIN BEAT VERLAINE off his latest release KAUFI, clearly demonstrates his knowledge of literature and its true relation to Rock n’ Roll. It’s like Dylan without the throat cancer vocal, but voiced like a true expressionist virtuoso. Others like ILLICIT, prove his acceptance and acknowledgment of the most Classic Rock. Not radio Classic Rock. This is not Zeppelin. This is Iggy Pop and MC5 without the hard hitting drum beats and noise guitars, just the vibe and the vision. I personally do not know what is cooking up next in this mad man’s brain, who I could really only compare to a European Captain Beefheart, and I know I haven’t heard or read everything by this man, but this is a legend in the making, although his humility will never allow you to acknowledge this. I just know on a strange vodka soaked rainy night in Los Angeles at 3:30 in the morning, I know that the direction of music is in the hands of a cheap guitar and a laptop and a head that doesn’t put down a pencil, and it will beat anything that America will ever give a Grammy or other bullshit award to. The future is here, you just have to open your ears." (Mike Brennan).

"Every self-respecting songwriter, moving in lo-fi aesthetics, spits out his releases at chainguin speed. It is no different with A. J. Kaufmann. On his bandcamp profile, we can find almost 30 titles. From this vast archive of sounds, I received the album Kaufi, released this year, which in my opinion 100% reflects the philosophy of creating the musician and poet from Poznań. The assumptions of Kafumann's style are very simple - recording on the cheapest equipment, the aim of which is not to obtain the most beautiful timbre, but to enable the recording of a given moment, capturing its unique vibrations. This immediately imposes associations with surrealism, and in my opinion this is the key word for Adam's music and lyrics. He creates a world suspended between wakefulness and sleep, full of hallucinogenic journeys and references to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s. Compared to the syncretic Stoned Gypsy Wonderer, Kaufi is a simpler and more stylistically consistent album. Although in one of the reviews I encountered numerous references to the heroes of the psychedelic scene from San Francisco, my own feelings are completely different. Kaufi's content, both in terms of style of play and Kaufmann's vocals, reminds me more of a Current 93 psychedelic neofolk with occasional drifts towards Bowie and the garage. Kaufi is an album that definitely requires patience from the listener, which discovers its true face only after a dozen or so auditions. Then we catch the beautifully sour and disturbing Waves, classic rockers Fluctuaction and Dada Rock bursting with energy, or the passion in Illicit. However, although the album made a positive impression on me, I do not quite like the aura of hippie naivety that permeates Adam's work. But if you haven't tumbled down into musical hipsters like I did, and your hot play of the week instead of Pakistani psycho-pop is Young Girl Sunday Blues, pop a pill, a pill or two, and open the door to Mr. Kaufmann's surreal world." (Magivanga, PL).

credits

released September 2, 2014

A.J. Kaufmann - words, music, acoustic guitar.
Justin Jackley - artwork.

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A.J. Kaufmann - "Stoned Gypsy Wanderer" image

A.J. Kaufmann - "Stoned Gypsy Wanderer" Poznań, Poland

A.J. knows his Rimbaud, jazz, blues and beatnik roots, and what really brings poetry and Rock N Roll together. His work is reminiscent of Tom Waits or Warren Zevon, mixed with The Doors, but also the folksiness of not a Dylan but a Guthrie – a man of the streets and not hiding behind any shades. When you hear Stoned Gypsy Wanderer, you are hearing authenticity. He was and is The Wanderer. ... more

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