Lan Sweeper

Niels Lan Doky: "My A&R director Thomas Rohde and my new manager at the time, Anders Tidemann, organized for me to go on a research trip to Vietnam to explore my roots in the hope of finding some inspiration that could lead to a new innovative album that would merge modern jazz with both traditional and contemporary Asian elements. When my father Thai heard I was going out there, he decided to join me on the trip and it ended up being not only my first (of many) trips to Vietnam but also my father’s first trip back in 53 years. It turned out to be a very exciting, adventurous and emotional experience for both of us. During my process of connecting with my father’s homeland, I met some utterly amazing Vietnamese and Chinese musicians, not least the great composer and producer Quoc Trung and the mesmerizing female vocalist Thanh Lam…

The journey Niels Lan Doky and Gino Vannelli have undertaken in this album is - most of all - a rejoining journey. A reunion with their own roots ("A Word To My Father"), with their most intimate affections ("Tout Depend De Nous"), with Nature ("The War Of A Lonesome Dove"), with the World ("Close Your Eyes") and Spirituality ("Karumi"). To rejoin all this is to perceive Opposites and Conflicts as mere appearances. As such, melody and dissonance, sound and silence, perfect and unperfect, sacred and profane share the same, radiant Light. Recognising such differences means to solve them, to focus where the beauty and unity are coming from. This is "Haitek Haiku": at the same time an ideal Myth, a Project and a Sound.
In the heterogenity of its ten tracks, hypertechnological and hyperhuman coexist with one another…