Critics

»Friend 'n Fellow
Live A Ruf Records lançou até hoje três álbuns de originais de Friend ‘n Fellow - é mais que tempo para um CD ao vivo! Toda a gente que já teve o prazer de ver o duo em concerto ficou impressionado por uma actuação perfeita. A voz mágica de Constanze Friend e os grooves ricos da guitarra de Thomas Fellow estão agora disponíveis em disco nesta edição dupla. Os temas foram gravados em Weimar, na Alemanha, em Maio de 2003. Nesse concerto, os Friend ‘n Fellow olharam para os últimos anos da sua carreira e tocaram as suas melhores canções. Descrevem-se como “soul acústico”, mas são na realidade uma mistura de diversos estilos musicais. Luther Allison, que foi o mentor e amigo da banda, chamou-lhes “o som do novo século” Friend ‘n Fellow pertencem com certeza ao grupo das melhores bandas que misturam Jazz, Blues e Soul.«

»Des émules, version allemande, de Tuck & Patti et de Bet. e & Stef. Une pop jazz acoustique, un duo guitare-voix enregistré en spectacle et fétant à terme une collboration d´une dizaine d´anneés.
Beaucoup de standards communs au jazz et à la pop, dont une très belle version de Fly Like an Eagle et de I Still Haven´t Found What I´m Looking For. L´atmosphère est chaleureuse, voire parfois magique.«

»„... After listening to this album, you want to immediately return to the first song and start all over again...«
Gregor Hilden

»...The acoustic soul of this duo cannot possibly sound more intimate than it does on this, their fourth CD 'Taxi'... The enchanting, atmospheric denseness of their compositions is absolutely convincing... Subtle, elegant, melancholic, virtuoso, dynamic - one can find many fitting attributes to describe the new album...«

»Constanze Friend's voice is a near miracle of timbre and range. In this country there is no other woman who sounds more black in the low range, and her voice is gentle and full of nuances in the upper range... His guitar-playing is funky, jazzy, it grooves or soothes, and his percussion effects on the guitar are a feast for the ears...«
Klaus-Dieter Zeh

»...Friend ´n Fellow sound less and less artificial and more and more bluesy, earthy and even more spiritual. In the low range, Constanze can seem almost like a Voodoo-Priestess. Friend ´n Fellow have found their own story-telling style with voice and guitar.«
Detlef Kinsler

»On ‚Taxi' (Ruf Records) they give an intimate tête-á-tête, during which soul, folk, blues and jazz melt together in a most sensual way... ...the most exciting duo since Tuck & Patti...«

»...Whoever claimed until now that Friend ´n Fellow mostly lived from sweeping away its audience at live performances was right. Now, however, 'Taxi' is finally the perfect album to meet international standards...«
Udo Pipper

»German singer Constanze Friend and guitarist Thomas Fellow wowing the crowd with a virtuoso performance”«

»The smoky voice of Constanze (alias Friend), the virtuoso guitar-playing of Thomas (Fellow), and a lot of feeling makes U2's 'I Still Haven't Found…', Hendrix' 'Purple Haze' and their own pieces into intimate pearls of soul and blues with goose-bump effects.«
Jürgen Seibold

CD "Taxi" as Steroplay-Tip/The Audiophile

»„The comparison is hard to overlook: Tuck & Patti or Friend ´n Fellow — which of these two duos, both of which present the constellation 'sensitive white guitarist and smooth, black soul voice', deserves the gold medal as the world's best audiophile formation of two? The fact that Friend ´n Fellow are now even eligible for the gold medal is also due to the fantastic sound projection by Karsten Fuchs and Thomas Adapoe: Voice and guitar are fascinatingly present in space.«
Matthias Inhoffen

»„An indiscrete question, a string acrobat, a singer and the art of improvisation.«

»Live, they are known as a first-class attraction, especially because they then play almost completely without bounds«
Adrian Wolfen“

»A special sort of magic moves through the hall when Friend ´n Fellow reach for the microphone and the guitar« -mhr-

»Fantastic: Fellow's magical finger-acrobatics. His string repertoire ranges from buzzing to pseudo scratching. Sometimes it seems as though the artist has conjured up the optically absent drums in the cavity of his guitar Finally, Friend ´n Fellow releases pure party feeling A premium class concert.«

»...Mick Jagger would have given a considerable amount to have Stones as his surname, so that the whole world - and Keith Richard in particular — would have known who was the head of the band. With Constanze Friend and Thomas Fellow there is no mistaking: with Friend and Fellow, everyone is the boss. To keep it that way, they have consciously decided not to have any other members. They don't need anyone else; the pair delivers their acoustic soul with such unexpected fullness that any additional musician would feel superfluous. In fact, each of them would be fine all by themselves. When Constanze Friend sings, enemy armies fall lovingly into each other's arms and dogs kiss cats. Soft and round and soothing with plenty of spare room in the octaves and even more in style. The way Thomas Fellow plays his guitars is just as perfect, if not quite as physical. How easily he lays melodic phrases, rhythms and fine little solos around Constanze's voice using only his ten fingers. To do that, many guitarists would need a third hand. In order to avoid genetic manipulation, Thomas teaches how to play guitar with the usual "standard equipment" at the Dresden Conservatory of Music. Many try it without success. Friend `n Fellow are a high-percentage concentration of talent and feeling with a great love for everything that R&B has to offer. Amazing how much music a duo can ignite on stage live and how many different expressions a voice and a guitar can have in their repertoire. You can only believe it if you've experienced it. O.K., let's go«