[TR24][OF] Arne Jansen & Stephan Braun - Short Stories - 2026 (Jazz, Fusion)

foobar2000 2.25.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2026-03-29 18:41:58
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Analyzed: Arne Jansen, Stephan Braun / Short Stories
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DR         Peak         RMS     Duration Track
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DR10      -1.00 dB   -13.70 dB      4:22 01-Song For Issa
DR8       -1.00 dB   -13.84 dB      4:29 02-Dolphin Hotel
DR10      -1.00 dB   -14.66 dB      5:36 03-The Way of Truth
DR7       -1.00 dB   -11.77 dB      5:38 04-Before The Rain
DR11      -2.47 dB   -16.79 dB      3:52 05-In a Hundred Years
DR9       -1.00 dB   -12.05 dB      4:27 06-96 Minutes
DR11      -1.00 dB   -14.69 dB      4:41 07-The Trees Remember
DR10      -1.00 dB   -13.16 dB      3:07 08-For Ever and Ever
DR14      -1.00 dB   -17.72 dB      4:00 09-Where Once The Water Flowed
DR10      -1.00 dB   -13.54 dB      4:32 10-A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
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Number of tracks:  10
Official DR value: DR10
Samplerate:        96000 Hz
Channels:          2
Bits per sample:   24
Bitrate:           2370 kbps
Codec:             FLAC
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That's a really good story. That was the conclusion reached by the international media in response to the first joint album by Arne Jansen and Stephan Braun. On ‘Going Home’, Jansen, described by the Süddeutsche Zeitung as ‘one of the best and most versatile German guitarists’, and Braun, his congenial partner on cello and double bass, interpreted songs by the legendary rock band Dire Straits in a surprisingly different way. ‘Beautiful enough to make you cry,’ said Kulturnews magazine, while FAZEmag attested to the duo's ‘intoxicating modesty.’ The US trade journal Stereophile summed it up most aptly: ‘What fun this album is!’
For their new recording, the two busy musicians, who in the past have played alongside Melody Gardot, Nils Landgren, Till Brönner, Nils Wülker, Anders Jormin and the Orchestra Baobab, among others, set themselves the guideline: we tell our own stories. ‘We often performed the Dire Straits programme,’ says guitarist Jansen, ‘and we also interspersed it with our own material, as we don't normally do covers, but compose ourselves. After the concerts, people kept coming up to us and telling us how much they loved these pieces.’
Based on this, ‘Short Stories’ now consists, with two exceptions, of pieces written especially for the recording. The division of roles between Jansen and Braun is also significantly different from that on the debut album. Whereas the guitarist was something of a singer on six strings and responsible for the melodies in the Dire Straits tribute, it is now Braun who sets the tone on the cello and bass or plays virtuoso solos – for example in the incredibly moving ‘The Way of Truth’ or the dynamic ‘96 Minutes’.
‘With us, you have complete equality in every respect,’ Braun enthuses about the duo, ‘due to the nature of our instruments, we can perform as soloists, but we can also accompany just as well. This give and take is great.’ Jansen adds: "People often think in terms of genre boundaries. That kind of ideological thinking is not our thing at all. For us, it's all about working together, always wanting to make the other sound better."
Apart from that, the guitarist adds, his musical counterpart is a pioneer of cello playing: "He comes from a classical background, but thinks like a jazz saxophonist and has this groove thing and knows how to use effects. I can't think of many other cellists like that!" Jansen is not alone in this opinion: US guitar star Pat Metheny once wrote Braun an enthusiastic fan letter after seeing his cello videos on YouTube.
‘Short Stories’ shows how masterfully and innovatively Jansen and Braun have mastered their instruments – thanks to special playing techniques and the use of delays, loops and volume pedals, it often sounds like much more than just a duo. You think you can hear synthesizers, the rhythmic scraping of drum brushes or finely pulsating grooves. The narrative thread that ties everything together is friendship. You can hear in every note that Jansen and Braun have known each other for ages and are deeply connected. ‘We live very close to each other in the north of Berlin, have children of the same age and lots of topics to talk about. When we're out and about together, we chat the whole time,’ laughs Braun.
The ten tracks on ‘Short Stories’ are decisively shaped by this desire to communicate and the confidence to freely reveal even the most innermost feelings. Each composition has its own narrative approach. Sometimes the stories, which are rooted in jazz, folk, pop and Americana, have a decidedly literary background. For example, ‘Dolphin Hotel’, ‘In a Hundred Years’ and ‘For Ever and Ever’ unfold their own poetry based on novels and poems such as Haruki Murakami's ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’, Wolfgang Herrndorf's ‘Tschick’ or A.A. Milne's ‘The End’. Other pieces transform travel memories into intimate instrumental dialogues – the inspiration for ‘Where Once the Water Flowed’ comes from a mind-expanding hike through a dry riverbed in Provence, while ‘The Trees Remember’ is based on a visit to an enchanted, abandoned village in Istria.
And then again, these stories have a strong personal background. Such as the casually strolling ‘Song for Issa’, with which Jansen and Braun pay tribute to the great griot storyteller Issa Cissokho, the saxophonist of the Orchestra Baobab who died in 2019. Or ‘The Way of Truth’, which refers to a key experience in Jansen's student days. ‘I was part of Yehudi Menuhin's “Live Music Now” programme, which gives students the chance to give concerts in social institutions,’ recalls the guitarist. "Once we performed as a duo in a hospital and there was a patient my age right in front of me who was dying. That's when I played completely differently. Suddenly, it was all about digging as deep as possible within myself to give this woman something good. That's when I realised: this is why I make music. The older I get, the clearer it becomes to me: for me, it's about telling something true."
‘Short Stories’ is full of this humble restraint. Like any good storyteller, Jansen and Braun leave room for the unsaid, opening up spaces for interpretation that linger long in the listener's mind. This is also the speciality of songwriting genius Bob Dylan, whose ‘A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall’ ends the recording. It's crazy how relevant this is today, given the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Jansen thinks it's crazy how relevant this song, written under the impression of the Cuban Missile Crisis, still is today. Together with the apocalyptic, heat-shimmering ‘Before the Rain,’ penned by the guitarist, the Dylan song gives the album a narrative arc reminiscent of a famous quote by Leonard Bernstein: ‘This will be our answer to violence: to make music more intense, more beautiful, more devoted than ever before.’ With ‘Short Stories’, Arne Jansen and Stephan Braun are doing their part to turn these words into musical reality.