There is a peculiar moment in life when a sound heard in the dark refuses to identify itself. A bird? An insect? A distant machine? The mind reaches for certainty, but the night has other plans. The title of Flin van Hemmen’s "Could Also Be the Nachtzwaluw" emerges from exactly such a moment: a conversation with his father while listening to nocturnal sounds on a hillside. It is a title built on uncertainty, and in many ways uncertainty becomes the album’s guiding principle.

Van Hemmen has spent decades moving between instruments, disciplines, and musical identities. Born in the Netherlands, forged as a jazz drummer, transplanted to New York, and active across jazz, improvisation, experimental music, field recording, and electronic processing, he has accumulated influences the way rivers accumulate sediments. This record feels less like a new chapter than a meeting point where several tributaries finally converge. Acoustic guitar, piano, drums, environmental recordings, and digital manipulation all sit together without competing for attention, as if old friends have gathered around the same table after years apart.

The album arrives with an unusually explicit sense of purpose. Van Hemmen describes it as a response to the current state of the world, not as protest music but as something closer to emotional maintenance. That distinction matters. Plenty of records shout at history. "Could Also Be the Nachtzwaluw" chooses instead to sit quietly beside it and take notes.

Opening track "Loneduck the Divine" immediately establishes the record's curious balance between intimacy and distance. The title alone sounds like a forgotten character from a children's book written by a mystic who spent too much time watching migratory birds. The music follows a similarly elusive logic, where melodic fragments appear not as declarations but as invitations.

The centrepiece is undoubtedly "The Nachtzwaluw (for Sean Ali)", dedicated to Van Hemmen’s longtime collaborator in the outdoor improvisation project Forest Music. Stretching beyond eight minutes, it unfolds with the patience of someone watching daylight disappear over a landscape. Nothing here rushes. Themes emerge, linger, and drift away like shapes crossing a foggy field. The piece embodies the album’s larger philosophy: listening is not an act of consumption but of coexistence.

Elsewhere, Van Hemmen’s affection for ambiguity becomes increasingly apparent. "Marcescent in E min" takes its title from a botanical term describing leaves that wither but remain attached to the branch. It is an apt metaphor for much of the album, where ideas seem suspended between departure and persistence. The music rarely arrives at conventional resolutions. Instead, it occupies states of transition, those awkward and beautiful moments where something is becoming something else but has not quite decided what.

"Fugue State" plays with another kind of in-between condition. Its title references psychological dislocation, yet the music feels surprisingly grounded. Rhythmic figures and melodic gestures circle each other with quiet determination, creating a sensation not of being lost, but of wandering intentionally. Human beings spend enormous amounts of energy trying to know exactly where they are. Music like this reminds us that getting pleasantly sidetracked can be its own destination.

The wonderfully titled "Clarinet Concerto Palate Cleanser" provides a brief but telling glimpse of Van Hemmen’s humour. Experimental music often suffers from a chronic shortage of self-awareness, as if every sound were carrying the fate of civilization on its shoulders. Here, a touch of levity slips through. The title acknowledges the absurdity of categorisation while simultaneously embracing it. One imagines the composer smiling quietly while naming the piece.

Perhaps the most revealing track is "Allan Holdsworth". Rather than functioning as tribute in any straightforward sense, it reflects Van Hemmen’s broader relationship with influence. Throughout his career, he has absorbed ideas from jazz, contemporary composition, improvisation, and experimental sound art without becoming trapped by any of them. References appear not as monuments but as ingredients. They dissolve into the larger ecosystem of the music.

What makes "Could Also Be the Nachtzwaluw" particularly compelling is its refusal to separate musical exploration from lived experience. Many experimental records feel designed in laboratories of abstraction. Van Hemmen’s work feels inhabited. The field recordings, the acoustic instruments, the gentle imperfections, and the recurring sense of physical space all suggest a composer less interested in constructing worlds than in paying close attention to the one already surrounding him.

The album also benefits from its modest scale. At roughly thirty-five minutes, it resists the temptation to over-explain itself. Each piece contributes to an overarching mood without exhausting it. Like the nocturnal sounds that inspired its title, the music leaves room for mystery.

In the end, "Could Also Be the Nachtzwaluw" is a record about listening. Not merely hearing sounds, but listening deeply enough to accept uncertainty as part of the experience. In a culture increasingly obsessed with instant identification and immediate conclusions, Van Hemmen proposes something refreshingly different: perhaps we do not need to know exactly what we are hearing.

Perhaps it is enough to sit on a hill, listen carefully, and accept that it could also be the nachtzwaluw.