Mario Nyéky Riding With The Elephant (LP, 180g Vinyl)

(Meyer Records) 8 tracks, gatefold cover, audiophile recordings, incl. songbook 24-pages.

Cologne-based songwriter Mario Nyéky's first solo album, "Riding With The Elephant," is the second release in the Kitchen Recordings series from the Cologne-based Meyer Records label. As is well known, the focus here is on pure, intimate acoustic recordings that were recorded without much effort, but with very good technology. Here, less can indeed be more. (However, this does not apply to the presentation of this series, where the vinyl editions come with a specially produced songbook).

Already with the debut album "To The Wind" the songwriter Mario Nyéky, at that time together with his band The Road, attracted attention, when he - against all trends and fashions - simply convinced with competently staged old-school qualities. His ability to translate simple, personally colored but universally comprehensible stories into sympathetically down-to-earth songs with emotional and technical sovereignty convinced not only the fans, but also Werner Meyer, who decided to capture in particular the interpretive qualities that Mario had also demonstrated in many concerts, in an acoustic solo album of his Kitchen Recordings series. Accompanied only occasionally by road bassist Pierce Black, Mario Nyéky spreads out the whole spectrum of his repertoire on this album - somewhere between classical songwriting, folk and a little country feeling, between delicate finger-picking and gently played chord sequences. Mario Nyéky doesn't need any grand gestures - his soft vocals and the gentle, sparkling guitar playing alone make for great mental cinema.

The focus is on eight new songs, which are perhaps less characterized by wanderlust than the road songs, but which present a more personal view of Nyéky. Such as the title track, which contains Mario's charming offering in terms of poetic escapism, the instrumental "Apache," and a highly emotional version of "Love Over Gold," which he wrote (as a lullaby?) for his daughter and which will presumably be included on the next "The Road" album. With "Riding With The Elephant" Mario Nyéky confirms his exceptional position among songwriters from our latitudes, because hardly anyone achieves so much with so little effort as Mario Nyéky.

- Ullrich Maurer