By
Martin Schray
July 31, 2019, Berlin
When I volunteered to write about this year’s A’larmé! festival again, my
colleague Colin joked that it would be the same as ever year: too hot and
too loud. Surprisingly however, the first day was nothing like that at all.
Even Louis Rastig, the art director of the festival, said that he was glad
that the temperatures (20 °C) were moderate this year and that it was
even raining. As to the music the 2019 line-up is very promising, a bit
more focused than the
one last year with its extensive excursion to
electronic music, which tended to frighten away the regular free jazz
audience. This year’s program looks a bit more like going back to the roots
without giving up the main characteristics of diversity and crossing genre
boundaries. It’s the seventh festival and as usual it’s combining
avant-garde jazz with experimental music and noise, improvised music and
performance. As a reference to the neighborhood the festival started at the
Säälchen at Holzmarkt, very close to the usual festival venue Radialsystem.
And the first day was A’larmé! in a nutshell - experimental drumming,
mainstream bar jazz and hiphop/free jazz crossover.
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| Greg Fox |
The evening started with Greg Fox, who has performed and recorded with a
wide range of artists like the black metal band Liturgy (he left them in
2011) to the experimental/multi-genre act Guardian Alien and Colin
Stetson’s Ex Eye. In 2011 the Village Voice called him the “best drummer“
in New York City and until today you can sometimes see what a super fast
wizard he still is. But Fox wanted more and studied with Milford Graves and
Thurman Barker, both real free jazz legends. He worked with the avant-progrock
band Zs and with Oneida’s post-rock drummer John Colpitts. Fox also added
Sensory Percussion software into his setup. On this evening Fox was
equipped with an ordinary drum set and a lot of electronics, on which he
recalls pre-recorded material: saxophone lines, e-piano snippets, bass
runs, guitars arpeggios. Drum-wise Fox works a lot with rim shots but also
with powerful synth chords which reminded me of 1980s pop as well as
massive prog-rock excursions. In his fifth track of the evening the Sensory
Percussion technique became visible, although quite reduced. At the end of
the set the audience could witness some weaker moments (when he briefly
sounded like someone doing a drum solo in the 1970s) and excellent ones,
when he restricted himself almost solely to the snare drum, which was very
intensive. Here he was really close to the music of Graves and Barker. The
set raised the question what you can do as a solo drummer. How can you be
independent of melody instruments? The grooves stood in the foreground and
were supported by the textures and melody lines (the wonderful Maria Grant
provided the saxophone samples) and not the other way around. A promising
start.
 |
| Gurls |
Squeezed between two relatively heavy acts was the melodic sound of the
Norwegian trio Gurls, who are Rohey Taalah (voice), Hanna Paulsberg (sax,
vocals) and Ellen Andrea Wang (bass, vocals). The music and the lyrics paid
a certain tongue-in-cheek homage to the more superficial sides of life
(namely boys) in a self-aware, ironic way. Their music was very different to that
of the other acts of the evening, it was song-orientated and very close to
bar jazz and boss nova, though slightly off-the-wall at times. The music
was carried by muted grooves, the bass rolled, the sax often played short,
rhythmic licks reminiscent of Stan Getz. Talaah’s phrasing was a bit
similar, especially in the balladesque pieces. Every now and then the whole
thing was very close to the border of being overdone, but luckily it
doesn't cross it. Most of the audience loved it, but there were quite many
who also left the venue to get some fresh air waiting for the highlight of
the evening.
 |
| Anguish |
As one might imagine, Anguish was quite the opposite to Gurls. There was no
tongue in cheek, everything was dead serious. Anguish are Will Brooks,
(a.k.a. Dälek), guitarist / synthesist Mike Mare, saxophonist Mats
Gustafsson, drummer Andreas Werliin (both from Fire!), and keyboardist Hans
Joachim Irmler (of Faust fame). Their music includes atmospheric
improvisations as well as repetitive beat patterns, sax outcries, and
plenty of tension. Gustafsson delivered the tenor sax madman, and Irmler’s
and Mare’s contributions were haunting, apocalyptic, and evil. Like on
their debut the hiphop tracks angrily explored the darker side of urban and
social life. Dälek often recited the lyrics in the tradition of the Last
Poets, sometimes it could hardly be called hiphop, since there was no flow
in his lyrics. Between these tracks there were long instrumental electronic
transitions, here the band moved large monolithic blocks. Once there were
grooves, they crushed the delicate accessible structures. Above everything
Gustafsson’s sax soared intensively, as if he was going through agony.
Today the second day of the festival will start very early (6 p.m.) and
with Christian Lillinger, Hamid Drake, Tristan Honsinger etc. there are
even more famous musicians on the schedule.
I’m looking forward to the next three days.
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