NarRator Records: Santa Diver — Deep Diving (Audio CD)

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Product Details:

• Product Type: Audio CD
• Brand / Label: NarRator Records
• Catalog Number: NRR163
• Artist: Santa Diver
• Members: Luca Kézdy (violin, effects), Dávid Szesztay (electric bass), Dávid Szegő (drums)
• Release Year: 2017
• Genre: Jazz / World Music / Creative Music
• Style: Jazz, World, Free Improvisation, Instrumental
• UPC: 5998733101635
• Condition: Factory Sealed

Product Features

• Format: Audio CD
• Discs: 1
• Tracks: 5
• Recording: Studio album, recorded at Budapest Music Center (BMC)
• Language: Instrumental
• Packaging: Standard jewel case, factory sealed

Overview

Deep Diving is the third studio album from Santa Diver — a Budapest-based trio that plays somewhere between jazz, world music, and free improvisation, and sounds like none of those things exclusively. The instrumentation is unusual on purpose: violin, electric bass, and drums. No piano, no horn, no safety net. What fills that space is where the interest lies.

The album was recorded at Budapest Music Center, one of the city's premier jazz venues and studios, and the sessions were — by bandleader and violinist Luca Kézdy's own account — intense. Everyone pushed to their limit. That pressure is audible in the result: five tracks that are lean, focused, and quietly demanding.

Kézdy's violin leads throughout, but it isn't polite violin. Her playing is distorted, narrative, and physically present in the mix. Dávid Szesztay's bass is melodic enough to carry its own weight as a second voice rather than just a foundation, and Dávid Szegő's drumming is restless without being noisy — full of small decisions, constantly in motion.

The title is apt. Deep Diving doesn't float on the surface. These five pieces — from "Stormy Weather" to the closing "Folk Song" — reward attentive listening more than background play. A strong entry point for anyone curious about contemporary Hungarian jazz, and a confident step forward for a trio that clearly knows exactly what it's doing.

Interesting Facts

• Santa Diver was founded in 2006 by Luca Kézdy and Dávid Szesztay; drummer Dávid Szegő joined the lineup in 2015, making Deep Diving the first studio album to feature the trio's current lineup at full strength.
• Luca Kézdy began her classical violin training in Győr at age six, later studying aesthetics and philosophy at ELTE University in Budapest — a background that shapes the conceptual, narrative quality of her playing.
• The album was recorded in the corner room of Budapest Music Center (BMC), a venue that doubles as one of Hungary's most respected jazz recording spaces.
• Deep Diving is the trio's third album in a discography that spans Sending Ovation (2009), Santa Diver (2013), Deep Diving (2017), and Blue Horizon (2021).
• In 2017 — the same year this album was released — the band performed alongside Italian saxophonist Stefano Di Battista, and Kézdy played a duo concert with American jazz musician Chris Potter in New York.
• Santa Diver has performed at international festivals including the Chelsea Music Festival (New York), the Cairo Jazz Festival, the Südtirol Jazzfestival, and the Gaume Jazz Festival (Belgium).

Track Listing

1. Stormy Weather
2. Santa's Song
3. Ladybird
4. Darko (Dark Ornaments)
5. Folk Song

Publishers

Released by NarRator Records in 2017 (catalog number NRR163). Recorded at Budapest Music Center (BMC), Budapest, Hungary.

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