In recent years, Stefan Keune has mainly been involved with the reformed King Übü Örchestrü and the orchestra’s nucleus, XPACT (at least that’s how it seems to me). Keune, who has replaced the late Wolfgang Fuchs in the new outfit, is the perfect substitute, as he is a master of subtle, abstract and elegant playing. However, he can also play differently when his fellow musicians demand it. His trio with Dominic Lash on bass and Steve Noble on drums, with whom he has been playing for more than ten years now, brings out a more powerful Keune without pushing the nuance and the intricacy into the background.
In 2017, the trio played a few gigs in Germany, the last of which was at the Black Box in Münster, a renowned venue for free music in West Germany, before they played at the Moers Festival a few days later. Two days before the Münster gig, I saw them in Schorndorf and was impressed by how well they worked together and how organic the musical interaction was. In the liner notes to this new recording, Keune mentions that he plays too rarely with the two "but whenever the opportunity arises. There is a great familiarity and security, even in the freest of contexts, that I really enjoy." Black Box is the perfect example for these words.
The music simply kicks in and you’re thrown straight into the action. Keune’s lines smear around, while Lash and Noble rumble darkly. However, the music immediately becomes more precise, exploring its possibilities, bouncing against the limits of the registers. The musicians stretch out time, but then condense it in the next moment; the whole thing happens at a rapid pace and with the greatest possible elegance. In the trio’s music, the loud-quiet-passages, which structure the sets, are decisive. The improvisation then seems to implode out of nowhere, e.g. when saxophone and bass simply stop playing in the first piece and briefly leave the field to Steve Noble’s drums. But then they immediately feel their way back into the piece. And as is so often the case with excellent saxophone trios (and we are dealing with one here), it’s the quiet passages that are the most convincing ones. Keune, Lash and Noble create an enormous tension here, an urgency, a presence that we only know from the best of their genre, e.g. Evan Parker’s trio with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton. Keune’s rough melodies are turbulently taken by surprise by Noble and Lash, drum beats patter, rimshots hail, the bowed bass jerks and twitches and churns, the strings purr, bolt, creak and boom. It’s pure joy to listen to.
Anyone hoping for new magic and adventurous kicks from new chamber music, magic ignited by sparklers and a captivating interplay between cacophony and subtlety, melancholy and expressiveness - here is what you are looking for.
Black Box is available as a download.
You can listen to it and by the music here:
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