By Nick Ostrum
German multi-instrumentalist Udo Schindler has been recording and releasing music relentlessly over the last few years. The reviews below offer a glimpse of just some of his production over the first half of this year.
See part 1 here.Udo Schindler and Andreas Willers – Analytical Pre-Summer Retreat (FMR, 2026)
Analytical Pre-Summer Retreat captures Schindler (tenor sax, e-flat clarinet, piccolo flute, and cornet) with Berlin improvisor Andreas Willers (guitar and devices) at a live date at Studio+Atelier SCHINDLER in Krailing/Munich in 2025. The two had previously collaborated on 2022’s STORM without WIND and a 2023 trio session with Eric Zwang Eriksson titled Cassiber Complex_Unconditioned Sounds In A Box. As with the other, this one shows range, but a different range than the more restrictively acoustic outings reviewed above. Here one hears how electric Schindler’s trills and flutters can sound, and Willers, with over forty years of electro-acoustic collaboration under his belt, is the person to bring that out. He veers from shreds and electronic chaos to simple repeating clusters and other rummaging to prickly vines with a Scandinavian free rock sensibility a la Tellef Øgrim, Gunnar Backmann, and their ilk. A gritty and textured set that is as much about Schindler’s arsenal (including some nice trumpet work) as it is about Willers’ clattery fretwork.
Analytical Pre-Summer Retreat is available via the arc-musik website: https://arch-musik.de/project/analytical-pre-summer-retreat/ .
Udo Schindler, Harald Kimmig, Eric Zwang Eriksson – Imprints of Experiences (Creative Sources, 2026)
With a total of three members, Imprints of Experiences captures the largest unit of the releases reviewed here, and its sound is correspondingly (and comparatively) full. Schindler deploys a range of instruments, some heard before (clarinets, cornet, saxophone) and one (b-flat tubax) unique to this recording. Harald Kimmig meanwhile contributes an energetic violin and Eric Zwang Eriksson, an array of prattling percussion. Playing live over two nights in Munich in 2024, the trio offers quite a range of sounds. Schindler does his thing, screeching, torquing, huffing, and, now, even singing through an array of horns. Kimmig and Eriksson, however, really distinguish this release. Eriksson and Schindler have collaborated frequently over the last half-decade, and the resulting concordance shows especially in the quieter segments, when Eriksson matches Schindler’s clucks and clicks with a concerted pitter patter of his own. Kimmig, who has a shorter history with Schindler, can also tap raindrops and rustling foliage, but shows he can also drive the trio out of these moments through his sharp and shimmering tremolo, at which points Schindler starts to stretch out into more frenzied spaces. This may be less rambunctious than some other releases, but it is no less probing, and even more entrancing. And some of that pull should be attributed specially to Eriksson and his controlled but curious rummaging. It lays a calm but spumy sediment that gives bubbly rise to the harmonics that fill out the wider sound.
Imprints of Experiences is available on CD and as a download on bandcamp.
PS: I had originally intended to review Schindler’s 2026 releases up through June, however quickly I realized that was a fool’s errand. For those interested, this year he also released albums with Andrea Centazzo and Harnik on Itcus, Nicola Hein and Nikolaus Neuser on Creative Sources, and Flo Stoffner and Michael Wintsch on arc-musik. By the time this review runs, there will likely be others, as well. Happy listening.