Echtzeit@30: Introduction

Berlin, through the trees. (c) Paul Acquaro

echtzeit musik - Day 1

When the question was posed to the folks in the Free Jazz Collective, who would like to join in on a tribute to the echtzeit musik scene in Berlin, the main question was "what is the echtzeit scene"? Funnily, that was a similar answer to some that we received from several of the musicians who comprise the scene itself. It turns out, it is not the worst description of it either, as putting one's finger on it and tracing its contours has not been a straightforward endeavor. Yet it exists ... right? 

Well, we say na klar!, we think it does! "Real-time music", the English translation of "echtzeit musik" seems to have a trail of evidence. For example, we have the invaluable echtzeit musik web site, which is the go-to site to know what is happening with avant and experimental music and where in Berlin it can be found. Then, there are the venues, like the mainstays Ausland, Soweiso, Petersburg Art Space, Au Topsi, KM28, Kuehlspot, and several others. Plus, there is the history, going back, as electronics artist and saxophonist Iganz Schick points out in his interview here, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991.

Anyway, as elusive or as present as it is ... in real time ... the next few days on the Free Jazz Blog we pay a tribute, on its 30th anniversary, to the ever changing and evolving experimental music emanating from the ever changing and evolving city that it has sprung from.

Today, we offer a link to some very recent video discussions that were held at the non-profit art-space exploratorium berlin commemorating, discussing, defining the scene, and we have culled an overview of recent reviews that have been posted on the Free Jazz Blog that are from musicians connected to it. We are also presenting Q&A's that we have conducted over the past month with artists from across the scenes lifespan, starting with founding members Burkhard Beins, Robin Hayward, Ignaz Schick, and Olaf Rupp. 

It is important to acknowledge that this is not a comprehensive list or feature. We would not really know where to start - or more importantly - end with getting to everyone involved. We do have many more folks that we would love to reach out to and hear back from, and maybe we can. If you have suggestions, people we should talk to, suggestions and ideas, let us know. Also, a couple of words of thanks: Keith Prosk was instrumental in developing and shaping the feature, as well as making connections and reviewing albums. Martin Schray and Eyal Hareuveni assisted with Q&As and reviews, and Cristina Marx lent us her fantastic photography.

- Paul Acquaro

And so it begins ... 

echtzeitmusik-related recordings previously reviewed by The Free Jazz Collective in 2021

Lucio Capece & Ben Vida - Unwelt (Bocian, 2020)
Read our review here .
https://bocian.bandcamp.com/album/umwelt

Cranes - Formation < Deviation (Relative Pitch Records, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://matthiasmueller.bandcamp.com/album/formation-deviation

Achim Kaufmann & Ignaz Schick - Altered Alchemy (Zarek, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://zarekberlin.bandcamp.com/album/altered-alchemy

Daniel Lercher, Sabine Vogel - Bogong Dam (self-released, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://sabinevogel.bandcamp.com/track/bogong-dam

Magda Mayas - Confluence (Relative Pitch Records, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://magdamayas.bandcamp.com/album/magda-mayas-filamental-confluence

Microtub - Sonic Drift (Sofa, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://robinhayward2.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-drift

Olaf Rupp - NOBEACH (Audiosemantics, 2020)
Read our review here .
https://audiosemantics.bandcamp.com/album/nobeach

Olaf Rupp - Nowhere Near (Audiosemantics, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://audiosemantics.bandcamp.com/album/nowhere-near

Schick/Steidle - ILOG2 (Zarek, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://zarekberlin.bandcamp.com/album/ilog2

Schmoliner/Melbye/Gordoa - GRIFF (Inexhaustible Editions, 2020)
Read our review here .
https://inexhaustibleeditions.bandcamp.com/album/griff

Superimpose - With (Inexhaustible Editions, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://inexhaustibleeditions.bandcamp.com/album/with-john-butcher-sofia-jernberg-nate-wooley

Biliana Voutchkova - Seeds of Songs (Takuroku, 2021)
Read our review here .
https://bilianavoutchkova.bandcamp.com/album/seeds-of-songs

---

Video: 

In this video, moderated by Mathias Maschat, Alexander Markvart, Rieko Okuda, Ignaz Schick und Alexander von Schlippenbach discuss the generations of experimental musicians in Berlin. It serves as  a nice introduction to the echtzeit musik scene. More can be found on the exploratorium's YouTube channel.

   

Please check out the Q&A's off the site's main page, or by clicking on the "echtzeit@30" tag.

Read More

echtzeit@30: Q&A with Mia Dyberg

Mia Dyberg. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

Explore Mia Dyberg’s site here . Recent releases include Wide Pointillism with Matthias Müller and Horizons with Kamilla Kovacs and Asger Thomsen.

What is echtzeitmusik to you? Is what might be considered echtzeitmusik connected through any approach, process, or sound result?

I don't think I can answer what echtzeitmusik is, I alone cannot determine this, but it could be looked as more of a collective experience. Besides, my answer would already be in the past. And present time music is something that happens the moment you listen to it?

One thing I can say is that the echtzeit calendar has been a great tool for me to find out if my colleagues were playing concerts I could go and hear and thereby be part of the audience-berlin-community. Or to tell about my gigs where my colleagues, or possible fans could see that I was playing. I am very grateful for this calendar!

It is a challenge to say something general about what echtzeit music is. But if I speak from the echtzeit calendar, you can think of it as an umbrella that collects all concerts in Berlin where some musicians associated with the scene have submitted their concerts.

Now, if I just try to improvise my answer, some different groupings/divisions pop up. But groupings that can be very different but still live under the same roof: the calendar.

Minimalist improv, experimental perfromatic, dadaist improv, fff free-jazz, composed free-jazz with improv elements and much more. Very different from each other. I guess the point is visibility and a way to meet other people. But inside the different groups you could have different approaches, collective improvisation or individual expression for example. But I guess there is a collective interest and curiosity that I cherish.

I like to relate it to the Hannah Arendt plurality-concept: that we become something in the eyes of each other. The Echtzeit audience and musicians exist in the eyes of each other. Being together in the same room and being something for other people has an even greater weight in these times of isolation and increasingly more people feeling alone.

Is there something material - like demographics, affordability, or cultural practices - about Berlin that you think makes such a scene possible?

Yes affordable prices. And the audience seems somehow more open and curious about the improvisation that is going on at the moment. The audience here is used to easy access to improvisation and seems educated in listening curiously.

In what ways do you think the scene has changed since your involvement and what might have caused these changes?

Joining Klub Demboh in 2017 and performing regularly every monday has somehow give me some roots and a stronger audience-connection.

In what ways has the scene changed you and your musical practice?

Now after 5,5 years in berlin I’m aiming even more for pure/precise improvisation.

Are there any recordings, labels, venues, musicians, or other participants you would like to shout out for cultivating the scene, or that you feel are essential to it? And is there a recording of you or your work that you feel is particularly representative of the scene?

Wide Pointilisme Matthias Müller/Mia Dyberg

What did you find in Berlin that you did not find in Denmark?

Space

- Interview conducted by Keith Prosk

Read More

Echtzeit@30: Q&A with Olaf Rupp

Olaf Rupp. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

FJB: How did you get in touch with Echtzeit music?

Olaf Rupp: We just played together a lot more back in the 1990s. With the years everything has become more specialized. I got in touch with the music itself while I was at university. At the end of the 80s, I studied interpreting in Saarbrücken. You also had to do an additional subject there, and for me it was technology, including communications engineering. I wrote my diploma thesis on guitar tube amplifiers. I found the analogy interesting at the time, because people kept coming and wanting to involve me in fundamental discussions about my music, suggesting that "improvisation" was somehow inferior to "concepts" and planning and "composition". I thought I could avoid this by using a new term. But I was wrong. The term „Echtzeitmusik" (real time music) then became just as tattered as improvised music. In rhetoric, lively free speech is still more valid today than speeches read off the page. Interestingly enough, no one has yet been able to explain to me why this should be different in music.

What does Echtzeitmusik mean to you?

It basically means the same thing as improvised music, only with different connotations. The term "real time" comes from communications engineering and refers to a transmission of information without a time delay. (When a car driver moves the steering wheel and that impulse is then immediately transmitted to the wheels, that's real-time transmission. When NASA technicians send a steering command to the Mars rover, the rover does not turn until about 20 minutes later - that’s time-delayed signal transmission). If you apply this to music, it just means that there is no time lag between "composition" and performance of the music. Improvisation as an instantaneous special case of composition. The music is designed only at the moment of performance.

In what way do you benefit from Echtzeit?

Basically, it’s always good to get organized. Echtzeit will certainly develop more and more. But it's also not so easy to balance everything, especially because of the broad stylistic spread.

Has Echtzeit influenced your music?

When I started playing guitar at 12, I was just improvising. But I didn't know where that belonged, I just thought it was great. My first encounter with improvised music was around 17 at a private dinner with friends in Paris. At first there was rather common jazz (which I was hardly interested in) until one of the people put on a record by Cecil Taylor. From then on I was lost for the conversation at the table, I was just listening to the music. That was crass, to hear that there are others who "just played it" in concerts and on records. I thought I was crazy. Whenever I wanted to play Bach I deviated from the notes after a short time and then played for hours my own confused stuff. And that was always the input of what was going on around me. People were asking "Can you also play the guitar "properly"?" and so on....

To what extent do you think the scene has changed since you’ve got involved and what could be the reason for these changes?

There’s a lot more pressure! Society as a whole is under much more pressure. The years in which brutal budget constraints and the HARTZ IV (the short form of a German social welfare program) ideology destroyed a lot of things. In the people’s souls and in the structures of the music scene. And we are all still suffering from the consequences to this day.

Is what could be called Echtzeitmusik connected by an approach, a process or a sound result?

There are now so many different interpretations of the term "Echtzeitmusik" that it’s no longer good for anything. That's why I hardly use the term anymore. I know people who say that if they write a composition and then perform it on stage, that is also real-time music. Improvisation is clearly a method and not a stylistic term. And that's why especially the people in music exploitation and music administration have such problems with the term improvised music. Because they are still very interested in maintaining separating categories. And it’s precisely such fuzzy terms like Echtzeitmusik that are ideally suited to pigeonhole and split.

Are there any recordings, labels, venues, musicians or other people involved that you would like to highlight because they have contributed a lot to the scene or that you consider essential to it?

FMP! Most definitely! Jost Gebers has done an incredible amount for improvised music. Many people (including me) complained about FMP back in the 90s. Because they were not very open to new musicians. Today I see it differently: first of all, they just did their thing. And that was good and they didn't want to experiment with it. Never change a winning team. But more importantly, I realized much much later, that all of us, even those who weren't allowed to play at the Total Music Meetings, benefited indirectly from the fact that FMP existed, especially because of its structures. Many musicians forget this and lightly brush it aside today. But - hey - music is always somehow like throwing stones into the sky. As a person I’d like to mention Ignatz Schick, who has achieved great things with his festival ECHTZEITMUSIKTAGE 2010. First, he showed us all what the whole thing could look like if it was organized really well (instead of door gigs in pubs and cafes). And second, he also clearly showed everyone how broad the stylistic spectrum of music improvised in real time can be.

Thank you for the interview, Olaf.

- Q&A conducted by Martin Schray

Read More

echtzeit@30: Q&A with Madga Mayas

Magda Mayas. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

Explore Magda Mayas’ site here . Recent releases include Objects of Interest with Tina Douglas, Spoken / Unspoken with Miako Klein and Biliana Voutchkova, and Dinner Music with Chritoph Erb and Gerry Hemingway as well as a print-only volume of non-standard notations, Graphème , in collaboration with Tony Buck, Racha Gharbieh, Mazen Kerbaj, and Ute Wassermann and featuring additional work from Tomomi Adachi, Lotte Anker, Marina Cyrino, Tina Douglas, Phill Niblock, Jon Rose, and Nate Wooley.

What is echtzeitmusik to you? Is what might be considered echtzeitmusik connected through any approach, process, or sound result?

I think in the beginning Echtzeitmusik was very much associated with a reductionist approach, or a starting from scratch and opposing other present movements such as the (Berlin) Free Jazz scene. Many people still associate this with Echtzeit. I think the musicians who started using the label see it more as a phase in the beginning and that Echtzeit can encompass all experimental/improvised music approaches currently happening in Berlin - however, I think that defies the point of using a label in the first place. So personally I guess I would see it as an important and defining movement that happened in the past, which since then branched out into many different directions (along with or parallel to other movements and styles).

Is there something material - like demographics, affordability, or cultural practices - about Berlin that you think makes such a scene possible?

Affordability certainly played a big role for many decades, which drew artists into moving to Berlin. This is of course changing, like everywhere else. As a particular feature of the scene, I also experience the need to discuss and reflect on music/art among musicians and audiences, often right after a performance has happened, as well as warm support among artists, who frequently come and see each others concerts/performances and help each other out. There are still many venues, established and new/temporary ones, where one can try things out, even residency type performances, where artists are asked to curate a couple of days (see Autopsi Pohl) - I find that quite special and necessary. Pre Covid there were also many house concerts happening - meaning a relaxed setting in peoples living rooms and backyards, to experience music. I have organized many of those over many years together with Tony Buck, as have Andrea Neumann, Ute Wassermann, Mazen Kerbaj and many others. Of course, house concerts happen in other cities too though.

Are there any recordings, labels, venues, musicians, or other participants you would like to shout out for cultivating the scene, or that you feel are essential to it? And is there a recording of you or your work that you feel is particularly representative of the scene?

Venues: KM28, Autopsi Pohl and ausland are among my favourites.

There are so many musicians, hard to make suggestions so I will just mention musicians who moved relatively recently, who are shaping and changing the scene: Marina Cyrino, Mathias Koole, Tony Elieh.

My duo Spill, with Tony Buck, started here in 2002. We released 4 recordings.

As smallest functional unit organized Graphème, I imagine you saw a variety of compositions from across the world and I wonder if you recognized any throughlines or even tenuous similarities in compositions or notations from the Berlin scene.

In the first edition we specifically did not include Berlin composers (other than ourselves), as we wanted to introduce the project as an international publication. Of course it being a first edition we also introduced our own work, all living in Berlin and being part of the scene here. I don’t think our 4 scores (Kerbaj, Wassermann, Buck, Mayas) are similar - quite the opposite. And I guess that’s also a problem with using labels such as Echtzeit - if it is supposed to include the totality of experimental/improvised music in Berlin it becomes a redundant label - unless all its meant to be is to represent diversity. One issue with this project was to bridge composed and improvised music scenes, which partly already happens in Berlin, however, one can still feel cultural and financial divisions.

 

- Interview conducted by Keith Prosk

Read More

John Butcher - 5 LPs from Berlin (and Leipzig) on NI VU NI CONNU

John Butcher at Ausland, November 2019. (c) Cristina Marx

By Paul Acquaro

British saxophonist John Butcher is no stranger to Berlin. Linked to the Echtzeit scene that emerged during the heady days of post re-unification Germany in the abundant derelict spaces that served as breeding grounds for creativity, Butcher, on the occasion of this 65th birthday, held a short residency in November 2019 at one of the original and still existent Echtzeit venues, the experimental music hub Ausland, located in the now tamed and expensive Prenzlauer Berg. Presented as a set of 5 LPs, the music captures both new and old music acquaintances, the music and information within showcases Butcher's continuing ability to push listeners and musicians alike in new directions. On the albums, he collaborates in combinations with Sophie Agnel, Gino Robair, Thomas Lehn, Marta Zapparoli, Liz Allbee, Ignaz Schick, Magda Mayas, Tony Buck, Werner Dafeldecker and Burkhard Beins. The LPs in the the collection contain liner notes from Stuart Broomer, photos by Cristina Marx, and gatefold sleeves design by Yaqin Si.

Sophie Agnel & John Butcher - la pierre tachée

Stuart Broomer's generous and excellent liner notes are essential in placing the music on these albums into meaningful historical context, and the quote that he chooses to begin with is key to framing the whole event. According to Butcher:

"Ausland was unique in my own experience. I was working with four different groups in two nights and had chosen the musicians to form specific units with unique identities and possibilities. I didn’t want it to be a Company-type event (which, by the way, I also love) where the grouping is more ad-hoc and the accumulative results more evolutionary. I was interested in the potential distinctiveness of each set, given that I was the constant factor, but without major aesthetic leaps and without me having to pretend to be a chameleon.”

So the set of changing constellations begins with Butcher and French pianist Sophie Agnel.  It begins with Agnel approaching the piano in a percussive manner, a scraping and striking of the piano's strings, while Butcher plays legato tones, before he interrupts with a splutter of sounds. The track, 'chemin creux' then evolves into series of woodwind multiphonics over austere, prepared tones from the piano. The music builds at a measured pace: a quickening of textured tones from Agnel, a thickening of tonal textures from Butcher. The sounds connect, they resist as much as they exist co-exist in the shared musical space, introducing tension and drama as the music continues. It sounds like a dance, a fight, resolution, and finally agreement. A highlight of the set is in the opening minutes of 'shrieks in cups of gold,' in which both Agnel and Butcher reach a fevered pitch and then wander for a tense span of time exploring small sounds, before launching into a second intense passage. The ending track 'sillonner' wraps up the recording on a high note with a rich summary of the intensity and space throughout the album.

John Butcher / Thomas Lehn / Gino Robair - shaped & chased

The next recording seems to following Butcher's stated plans "to form specific units with unique identities". The sounds from saxophone undoubtable belongs to Butcher - the tones waver, flutter with the air, chirp with confidence, and at times explode into strong melodic statements. However, the setting has greatly changed with the work of Butcher's long time associates analog synthesizer player Thomas Lehn and percussionist Gino Robair.

The opening track, 'dorrying,' finds the trio quickly diving deep into a collective soundscape. Butcher sets the energy bar high in the opening minutes, which the other two respond to in kind, leading to an avalanche of sounds that quickly collapse into a long, tension filled exchange. The next track, 'tempren,' takes a different approach, with episodic build-ups of electronic tones, buzzing saxophone, and cascading percussion.  On the last track, Lehn's analog synthesizer (or is it Robair's Blippo box? - a fascinating custom machine that Broomer tantalizingly describes as being constructed based on chaos theory) shadows Butcher. When the plops of liquid sound appear, the synthesizer is much more likely the culprit. As the three come together, the atmosphere becomes spacey and rich with possibility. The track 'halouen' is almost straight-ahead jazz, sort of. Butcher plays rather melodic-free and aggressively spars with Lehn's otherworldly sounds. Finally, 'swough' fills with a fluid momentum, carried by mallet heavy percussion and unrelenting drips and splatters of electronic tonic.

Liz Allbee / John Butcher / Ignaz Schick / Marta Zapparoli - lamenti dall’infinito

Here is a true Echtzeit collaboration: trumpeter Liz Allbee, electronics/turntablist Ignaz Schick, and tapes and electronics artist Marta Zapparoli, all long time contributors to the Berlin scene. They are also the largest of the groups in this set, a quartet, or a double duo of acoustic horns and assorted electronic. The opening track 'Sea of Distortions' begins slowly, a drone of sorts, as the group begins filling the room with a stream of sound. At first, one may be wondering where Butcher is, between the whoosh and chatter of electronics and Allbee's unusual tones, but then you hear him, rapid blips leading to overblown legato notes. The momentum of the track builds, carried by Bucher at times, and the static nervousness of the electronics at other times. The opening track is a full album side, but by the half-way mark, you will likely be drawn into the unseeming sound world, losing track of time and place. Side B is split into a short 'Dialogues in a Shell', a piece just shy of four minutes, starting with a bricolage of samples that eventual yield to narrow drone. 'Molecular Memories,' at 17 minutes, begins with what may suggest a dentist's drill sounding out over a thumb piano. Electronics? Acoustic horns? They're in there, mixing together into unexpected combinations. Possibly the most in-accessible of the albums, but like most challenging things, it may be the one whose affects grow the most, the more you listen.

Vellum: Magda Mayas / John Butcher / Tony Buck - glints

Maybe this is the entry point for anyone still uninitiated in the sonic complexities of John Butcher's music. Not to suggest that the music on glints is in anyway easier to digest than on the other ones in this set, but there is something graspable in interactions of the three acoustic instruments in this long standing trio. Pianist Madga Mayas and percussionist Tony Buck, long time Berlin residents and  Butcher collaborators, surround the saxophonist with prepared piano and striking percussive textures, providing both a comfortable and stimulating environment.

Side A opens with a bang on the gong and high-end-of-perception squeaks from Butcher. There is a following clatter of percussion (maybe one of the those nets with shells attached?) and individually plucked notes from inside the piano. The flutters, the clacking, the plucking collectively lead the listener into a dense forest of sound, beautiful and strange, with possible danger lurking behind every turn. Going further, more formal sounds manifest like the truncated tinkle of prepared piano, brief smears of notes from the saxophone, and a roll from the drums. In Vellum's soundworld, it is hard not to be enrapt with the intricate and unexpected beauty in all the overlapping musical foliage. The group reaches an apex of intensity about 12 minutes into the slowly layering piece, which then mutates through a quiet percussion-led chrysalis to a cascade of notes from Mayas and Butchers, playing contours rather than scales, while Buck delivers some incisive drumming. Side B begins with the prepared piano attack that closes out Side A. The group then takes a spiritual detour, Butcher engaging in Evan Parker like circular breathing over an intense pulse from Buck. All this in 3 quick minutes, then it is over, as the group goes deeply introspective, slowly building back to a frenetic passage dominated by single note runs from the piano. The groups continues through this world, long winding passages through the forest leading to dramatic features and finally a serene clearing.

Burkhard Beins / John Butcher / Werner Dafeldecker - induction

This final set takes us out of Ausland. Side A was recorded at the experimental music room KM28 across the famous divide and into the former western neighborhood of Kreuzberg, and Side B was recorded a bit farther away at the KulTurnhalle in the city of Leipzig. The trio, percussionist Burkhard Beins, bassist Werner Dafeldecker and Butcher have worked together before for a while, most notably in the group Polwechsel. On 'induction' the music toggles between minimal to maximal, with all sorts of interactions between. Towards the end of the first track, 'circulation,' there is a tremendous amount of percussion and rumbling bass, while Bucher fires on all cylinders, playing notes far beyond the typical range of the saxophone. Prior to these final moments of the track, there is a long accumulation of intrumental ideas and approaches. Side 2 begins with 'Connection', starting with sounds drawn from the drums, then the sax, and finally the bass in succession. They then build to a ringing drone interrupted by eruptive sounds from Butcher and Dafeldecker. The music is tense, even somewhat aggressive. The following up 'conversion' is a short interlude that opens up the space a bit, leading to 'confluence', which is a denser piece that in a sense straddles the darkness of the first one with the chain interactions of the second. The piece is an impressionistic sound collage, with many colorful tones mixing into unexpected combinations.

Taken as a whole, these five albums represent a new artistic high-point for the ever productive and creative Butcher. All of the recordings offer something different, though to reference the earlier quote, Butcher's playing is consistent, and consistently excellent. While it is true that he is no 'chameleon', it is also noteworthy that he also is not a one-trick pony. The variety of the musical collaborations and the variability in each performance - each piece - is rich. The live experience, in the small subterranean Ausland, must have contributed significantly to the experience, but on its own, the music itself is evocative and demands close listening. Luckily, we can do just that.

All albums are available on the NI VU NI CONNU Bandcamp site, in both digital and LP format.

Read More

Echtzeit@30: Q&A with Ignaz Schick

Ignaz Schick. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

FJB: What is echtzeitmusik to you? Is what might be considered echtzeitmusik connected through any approach, process, or sound result?

Ignaz Schick: For me „Echtzeitmusik“ mostly is a community of similar minded musicians who started arriving in Berlin in a particular time, from the fall of the wall onwards, who were more or less from a similar generation and who were asking similar questions, confronted with similar hardships, at a certain moment of musical stand still within the first wave of European free jazz and improvised music. A community who were researching similar musical ideas or concepts and who often but not only improvised. For me Echtzeitmusik never stood for a musical aesthetic or method, nor for a style, …. What was new and maybe a key element was the use of extended instrument techniques, instrument building, electro-acoustic sounds and electronics, also the incorporation of formal/material elements inspired from different streams of contemporary music (i.e. musique concrète, minimalism, microtonality) but also a curiosity towards all kinds of forms of experimental (underground) music like noise, ambient, song formats, performance, sound installation. The development of course took its time and over the years developed into a huge and fertile community with several generations of musicians who quite soon started to be noticed worldwide, …. But there is not such a thing like a typical sound or style, the musical results are as diverse as its practitioners and characters. There is sometimes still this cliché (mostly from outside of Berlin) that Echtzeitmusik equals with „reductionism“, this has been attempted to be propagated by a rather small group of players and influencers who pushed into this directions in the late 90ies and early 2000s. There was an extreme period of deep research into those realms, but at the same time others were working into very different directions (i.e. new jazz and song formats, noise, performance or even with techno and club music elements).


Is there something material - like demographics, affordability, or cultural practices - about Berlin that you think makes such a scene possible?

Definitely for the first 10 to 15 years it was the economic & socio-political situation in Berlin in the time after the wall came down. The city was financially broke, and had to re-organize after the collapse of GDR system. The fall of the GDR system had created a vacuum mostly in the East part of town, not only that there was an unclear real estate situation, also politically all the beliefs and utopian hope of the left were scattered, … There were tons of empty lots/houses/factories with totally unclear ownership status, and people went into those houses and squatted them, or rented them for almost nothing, or used them temporarily. For us young musicians who were mostly ignored or not acknowledged by the previous generation of aging free jazz heroes. Many of us were literally kept out of the clubs and funded venues, but we could bypass this ignorance and just create, experiment & explore and also perform concerts with our new ideas in the squats. There was maybe not always excitement about our music in such places, but a huge tolerance for our experiments as there were new forms of living which were experimented with in the squats. We didn’t make much money, but we also did not need much. The housing conditions were often very rough (apartments with coal ovens, cold water, no shower or toilet on the public stair case), but for me particularly as for many others this did not matter, I grew up on a farm and I had a similar childhood with little „confort“. Most important for us at the time was: living costs & rents were extremely low. This attracted more and more adventurous musicians and artists from all over the world. Rents for a long time stayed extremely cheap, and as a result there were/are many spots and venues were opened with no commercial pressure where musicians could perform. And most improtant: nobody had to compromise his ideas and concepts, we could be as radical as we wanted, we were in the underground anyway, nobody told us how to play or adapt our music in a commercial way. Musicians in this music want to perform, as often as possible, like in the old jazz days, as we are developing a lot of our music live on stage. We also always met and worked (…) on our music in rehearsals, but then it really needs concerts to be able to evaluate your findings. In Berlin this was always possible, in contrast to other cities also today you can still play a lot, and this of course has always attracted a lot of adventurous musicians and people from all over to move to Berlin. We have had an amazing influx of fantastic players int he last 30 years, the whole range from super young and unknown to also very known and established players who want to be part of this amazing community...

In what ways do you think the scene has changed since your involvement and what might have caused these changes?

Although that tendency started already in the 90ies it is way more international now. The amount of musicians has probably trippled or quadrupled. The level and the quality of musicianship has constantly been raised. And the stylistic variety of the music is much more diverse today. I think this happens quite naturally as all those people who moved to Berlin also bring in their individual ideas, approaches and experiences and they start merging and fusing with those already present. So the technical quality is way more sophisticated and refined. In the early/mid 90ies the sound of Echtzeit was more noisy and raw, in the meantime it went through several phases of refinement but also through stylistic transitions.

Now there is more inter-collaboration of musicians from different stylistic backgrounds (jazz, new music, sound art, noise, elects-acoustic), people tend to think less in stylistic drawers. Many are involved in different projects, that can resulting in different music every time.

Another thing I notice is that there is much more money/funding involved, the scene grew up, got attention and gets financial support from the cultural administrations. Which also is deeply needed now as the days of cheap rent or empty spaces which can be used for free are long over. Many of the musicians I started out with are now internationally respected and renowned or have become professors. That is pretty awesome I would say, but sometimes also feels a little strange. And of course with the change of the monetary situation also the conditions of production have changed: when I do projects, I have to attempt to raise funds first in order to be able to pay my musician, the venue, the technicians. This was definitely not the case in the 90ies, everything worked in a completely different way, ….

In what ways has the scene changed you and your musical practice?

Hard to say, one thing most notably may be that I switched to electronics at an early point in Berlin, … I did already use electronics since I was a teenager and tried to incorporate electronics into my set-up in my Munich days, but it was in Berlin and the earlier Echtzeit days that I decided to make electronics my main instrument for live-perfornance. And I went through a deep research phase of sonic materials and alternative forms together with my colleagues. For quite some years I did not compose nor play saxophone in concerts anymore. I was busy researching and developing my musical language on turntables and electronics. But that is different now again, as I brought back composition, saxophone, sound installation, visual arts, …. But this is something the Berlin scene has been amazing with, this open supportive climate which allows for people to experiment. I have witnessed how many people have completely changed their sound & concept of playing after they arrived here, there is a big tolerance for extreme experimentation in Berlin, always has been.

What I definitely enjoy is this openess of the scene, like so many people are experimenting and are learning from each other, stimulating and challenging each other. I constantly involve with younger musicians, from diverse stylistic backrounds, and I constantly learn, I have to constantly rethink my playing … The scene definitely taught me to stay awake, to keep on researching, to stay curious, and to keep developing my skills and practice, ….


Are there any recordings, labels, venues, musicians, or other participants you would like to shout out for cultivating the scene, or that you feel are essential to it?

Well, that is a bit unfair and difficult, cause there are so many amazing players, but definitely the whole first wave of Echtzeit players like Andrea Neumann, Burkhard Beins, Annette Krebs, Axel Dörner, Robin Hayward, Michael Renkel (=Phosphor) are always worth to be checked out, but also players like Olaf Rupp, Tony Buck, Margareth Kammerer, …. This are all aging veterans of our scene, but they also stand for a certain reliable quality.

Nowdays it is more complex, as there are so many streams, generations and approaches, all the new noise and electro-acoustic artists, the ones who go more into sound art, pretty everyone in Splitter Orchestra, but also all those people who are developing a new hybrid form of jazz and contemporary music (like Christian Lillinger, Achim Kaufmann, Oliver Steidle, Uli Kempendorff…). Or what I call "the new young wild ones" around Loophole and Multiversal (Rieko Okuda, Antti Virtaranta, Utku Tavil, …) who are coming along with a totally different and often opposing musical approach towards the first generation of Echtzeit. Some of this is still in flux and development, but I really dig this next generations as they are challenging the first generation and our musical achievements. I don’t want to fall into the same trap door of ignorance as did so many of the 1960ies players towards us when we came up. I want to stay open and curious, even if I don’t always understand what the young ones are doing. I want to keep learning, and most you learn by playing with others, no matter if older, same generation or younger.

And is there a recording of you or your work that you feel is particularly representative of the scene?

I am not sure if I am particularly representative for the scene, I have so many different interests stylistically, from EAI, new jazz, new music, noise, sound art, electronic music. I think best is to just check my archival series on Bandcamp (http://www.zarekberlin.bandcamp.com), there are a lot of different things and projects to explore, music from various periods, …Soon I will also update the archival series (…) with compositions of mine.

My recent activities besides long going groups like Perlonex have been working with ILOG (with Oliver Steidle), Circuit Training or Inside A Leaf, or the duos with Frank Gratkowski, Christian Lillinger and Achim Kaufmann, or a larger group including Rieko Okuda and others from that circle of musicians.


In September of this year, you had a month-long exhibition in Berlin (and earlier in Munich) featuring other aspects of your art, could you talk a little bit about how this work (sound sculpture, graphical scores, LP-art) has evolved?

After secondary school I decided not to study music but visual art. I had studied music since I was eleven, and I needed a different perspective/look at things. (…) In parallel to my music I always had a strong interest in painting/collage. I always tried to fuse this two art forms, and a good way to go about this was doing graphic scores, vinyl objects, music machines or sound installations. I never really pushed a career in art. I found the art market way more disgusting than the jazz (club/festival) scene. Also my heavy touring routine did not allow a constant practice in art. For logistic reasons I mostly worked into sketch books. But from time to time I got invited and asked to do some stuff and then in 2019 an old friend and supporter from the country side of Bavaria, where I grew up, and who turned me onto music and art back in the day, asked me to do an exhibition at his farm. He is an amazing artist and music lover, he is 85 years old now and he still organizes exhibitions at his farm which he converted in big parts into a showroom. So I said yes, and the whole thing came out quite beautiful, it was a little bit like a retrospective, and thus I decided that it would be nice to show this works in Berlin as well, but in a much smaller space. Like this the four chapters came about, due to the size restrictions of the room. For „The Theory Of Everything“ I made two new sound installations, and I showed also two older ones, … With the four chapters I decided to change the main installation once a week, the rest of the show stayed for the whole time, … There were collages, graphic scores, cut-up vinyl multiples and objects that I also often use in my turntable performance and which often also have an attractive visual aspect, …

Like in most of my works also in the sonic installations, I work with found objects, I find stuff on the street, or on junkyards, or over the internet, like old speakers, household items and left behind stuff, and I assemble them in a new context. Like left behind speakers which are prepared with glass cylinders cut out of jars, and then I add objects to resonate. Through vibration, the mechanical speaker vibration, objects are triggered to resonate through sound waves. Or I use vibration motors from mobile phones, massage machines or sex toys, and I trigger them through MIDI to animate various metal objects, frame drums or Porzellane to resonate through vibration, …. Usually I work in a serialist way, like 48 source speakers, 22, speakers with fishing rods, or a swarm of 46 metal objects, … Swarms, clouds, or symmetric rows, … This way of working links it with the way I use turntables. Playing turntables is also a way of recycling and re-composing existing material into a completely new context. The same it is with scores, I often use old photogrpachs or graphics from scientific books, I cut them out or glue them into graphic scores and just change the meaning of the parameters, like a graph of population growth becomes pitch movement, or dynamics and so forth, …. It is playful, but has a hidden system and logic, like translating from one sphere to another.

- Q&A conducted by Paul Acquaro

Read More

echtzeit@30: Q&A with Matthias Müller

Matthias Müller. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

FJB: How did you get in touch with “Echtzeitmusik“?

Matthias Müller: I probably first came into contact with the term “Echtzeitmusik“ in 2004. That was the year I moved to Berlin, but it might have been even earlier, I don't really remember. At that time I was still more rooted in the jazz scene, even though my music already was a lot about free improvisation. I then came across alternative concert venues and series via the website www.echtzeitmusik.de, which already existed at the time. So I was able to make new contacts and immerse in an almost completely new musical world.

What does “Echtzeitmusik“ mean to you?

First of all, “Echtzeitmusik" is not a musical style - at least not anymore. When the term first appeared, which was probably in the mid-90s, it was, as far as I know, still intended as a definition of a certain form of improvisation - and above all to set itself apart from other terms like “free jazz“, “experimental music“, “new music“, and so on. It was a very reduced form of improvisation, therefore often referred to as reductionism. But since I wasn't on the ground then, I don't want to hold forth about it. What I do believe, however, is that reductionism still has a strong influence on the scene in Berlin today. Probably not in the same extreme form as back then, but definitely as a formal phenomenon. Today there is certainly much more diversity: new music, rock, noise, sound art, jazz of course, etc. One of the reasons is that the musicians often have completely diverse musical and cultural backgrounds. Today, that’s what “Echtzeitmusik“ means to me. It’s less a musical definition, it’s rather a collection of different forms of improvised music. Even if the spirit of reductionism still shines through until today.

In what way do you benefit from Echtzeit?

I’d rather say that I benefit from the Berlin scene, from the many different artistic personalities around me, from the people who have moved in from all over the world. I try to let myself be influenced by that and thereby sharpen my own profile. I go to concerts and try to play a lot with musicians of different generations, both with those who were already here in the 90s and with much younger ones who may have landed in Berlin for completely different reasons.

Has Echtzeit influenced your music?

Most definitely - if we talk about “Echtzeitmusik" coming out of reductionism. Maybe it’s not that recognisable in the music I make and publish today. But formal structures or the handling of silence and sound are absolutely present. As I said, I wasn’t in Berlin in the 90s, when this music had its heyday. I didn’t know anything about it at that time. I got to know most of it through recordings and later through direct contact with the “pioneers“. I played with many of them for the first time only when they had already stopped making reduced music.

What do you think could work better with the network?

I honestly never thought about "Echtzeitmusik" being a network before. There is a website where the current dates are listed as well as links to venues, etc. And this website is maintained by some people and always kept up to date, which is a great contribution. But the real, personal network is probably always the scene, friends, colleagues, etc. And not just in the city where you live. So from that point of view, I can't really answer your question about what could work better.

But your question is interesting because it actually points to something else! Namely, that the term “Echtzeitmusik“ seems to be pretty much attractive for many people! Many of us would perhaps say that they play “Echtzeitmusik“ without that term being explicitly defined.

To what extent do you think the scene has changed since you’ve got involved and what could be the reason for these changes?

The scene today is much more colorful, much more international, and probably less dogmatic. Of course, this has a lot to do with the changes in the city. Enormous numbers of musicians from all parts of the world have enriched the scene and given it new impulses, and in the last 20 years the scene has become much bigger. Berlin in the 90s and also at the beginning of the 2000s was a completely different city than today. This has had an impact on all areas and it’s been documented by all different fields of art and so - of course - by us as well.

Is what could be called “Echtzeitmusik“ connected by an approach, a process or a sound result?

Well, I don't know that either. The reduced - that is, “original - “Echtzeitmusik“ is still being made. But as I just said, the improvisation scene in Berlin is much more diverse now than it was 20 years ago. At that time, I think the desire to stand out from other forms of improvisation was much greater than it is today. Today, if you look at what concerts are listed on the website, there’s all kinds of stuff: jazz and impro, composed new music, etc. So there’s a wild mix going on. And from that point of view, I don’t think you can speak of a specific approach today.

Are there any recordings, labels, venues, musicians or other people involved that you would like to highlight because they have contributed a lot to the scene or that you consider essential to it?

One CD that was quite important for me is Barcelona Series by Andrea Neumann, Axel Dörner and Sven Åke Johansson (Hat Hut Records, 2001). For me, it’s a record that exemplifies the musical development of the Berlin scene. Of course, I can also recommend the book Echtzeitmusik - Definition einer Szene (Wolke Verlag, 2011) and the accompanying 3-CD box set, published by Mikroton in 2012. Event series that still play an important role for “Echtzeitmusik“ today are “Labor Sonor“ and the “Biegungen“ at the “Ausland“ club, which have always existed, as it feels. Other important venues for Improvised Music in Berlin today are “Sowieso“, “KM28“ and “Au Topsi Pohl“.

Thank you for the interview, Matthias. 

- Interview conducted by Martin Schray

Read More

MOVE - Hyvinkää (uniSono, 2017) ****

By Martin Schray

MOVE is an international improvising quintet consisting of Harri Sjöström (sax), Emilio Gordoa (vibraphone), Achim Kaufmann (piano, synthesizer), Adam Pultz Melbye (bass) and Dag Magnus Narvesen (drums, percussion). They’re all part of Berlin’s still prospering Echtzeit scene, a network of musicians and composers working at the interfaces of avant-garde, contemporary classical music, electronics, free jazz and improvised music. Typical for this scene, MOVE is the result of a session that took place at Dag Magnus Narvesen’s studio in 2013. Emilio Gordoa liked the sound of the group, took the initiative to organize some real concerts for them and since that went well too, he and Harri Sjöström decided to keep it active as MOVE.

Like a typical Echtzeit project, the ensemble tries to generate a sonic language which sounds electronic but which is produced by acoustic instruments - like white static produced by etheric noise, extended techniques, and silence. A good example of this approach is Emilio Gordoa’s way of playing the vibraphone: he includes all kinds of preparations, for example cans, cymbals, tambourines, tension belts etc. (it reminds me of Paul Lovens’ way of treating his drum kit). Based on this notion the band’s able to create a huge soundscape within an ample dynamic spectrum.

MOVE’s music is not 100% improvised, there are some preconceived ideas. According to Gordoa the quintet has “roads that we all know quite well and we know where these roads take us in music. This is our sound and the way of working with composed material. Nevertheless, we love to surprise the audience and ourselves, so leaving these roads is the real improvisation.“

Hyvinkää is a 40-minute recording of a live concert at the Hyvinkää Art Museum in Finland. The piece pops up like a bottle of champagne, the music spills and bubbles. However, this all happens very subtly, it’s spherical and floating at the same time. A bass drone is positioned against bell-like vibraphone sounds and piano arpeggios, while the saxophone tiptoes around them like a ballet dancer. In general, Kaufmann’s piano, Melbye’s bass, and Narvesen’s drums are very economical, they rather stress certain textures. The whole piece is the opposite of a dramatic rollercoaster ride, it displays a rather reluctant emotionality, circling around microtonal shifts, shy piano chords and myriads of percussion sounds. Only around the 25-minute mark the music gets darker, the toms and the bass are more menacing, although the sax is trying to fight them with beautiful lines.

MOVE’s music is often collectively improvised, there are hardly any solos or duos. It reminds me of a reduced, yet more expressive version of Wolfgang Fuchs’ King Übü Orchestrü, as if their music was culled from the Orchestrü’s post-minimalist approach. It’s delicate, stripped-down and introspective with lots of fragile short noise intersperses. Very recommendable.

Hyvinkää is available as a CD. You can buy it here.

Watch the band here:

Read More

The Pitch & Julia Reidy – Neutral Star (Miasmah - 2023)

By Guido Montegrandi

“The idea . . . that one can understand the ratios of musical consonances without experiencing them with the senses is wrong. Nor can one know the theory of music without being versed in its practice.” (Giovanni Battista Benedetti-mathematician 1563)

… setting aside all the theoretical explanations (but if you like them: David B. Doty), this is what Just intonation is about: experiencing consonances and different ways to combine sounds and pitches that quite diverge from the mean-tone temperament combinations that represents the standard of western music.

Even though the discussions about the use of just intonation date back to the renaissance theorists, all in all just intonation is but a tool and, in more recent years, this tool has spread out from the inner circle of academic geeks to go as far as the Horse Lords (which are roughly classified as an experimental rock band) to add a new sensation to consolidate music practices. The evolution of Berlin lowercase improv or echtzeit music scene has offered fertile ground for the diffusion of such a practice and here is where we finally come to “The Pitch” and the record that is the object of this review.

To make a 14 years tale short, (but for those of you who are interested in going deep in the history of The Pitch, the 475 September issue of The Wire offers an exhaustive overview) the ensemble has started exploring just intonation since 2019 and this work is the most recent chapter.

Neutral Star is the result of the collaboration between The Pitch (Boris Baltschun, organ, Koen Nutters, upright bass, Morten Joh, vibraphone, percussions Morten Joh, Michael Thieke, clarinet) & Julia Reidy (adjustable fret guitar) and comes after various exchanges they have had starting from the 2019 concerts of The Pitch to celebrate their ten years and the record that Joh and Reidy released in 2022.

The first of the two pieces is a transformation of Joh and Reidy piece endless ≠ limitless included in Tape Shadow and the result is paradigmatic of the music in this album: a collective, unified process that moves around some shared reference points and slowly unfolds producing a sound that is all focused on making music together. Drones and sparse arpeggios go through a tonal sliding also favoured by the use of unstable cassettes to process and delay the sound. And this is the peculiar way The Pitch approaches just intonation adjusting the tones to play together.

The second piece Neutral Star in marked by a constant double bass punctuation that builds up the foundation for the various shifting layers produced by the other musicians and by the electronics.

The whole album “was recorded in one take (by Rabih Beaini in his Morphine Raum studio/venue) in front of a live audience and without overdubs” (from the album notes) and this again is consistent with the idea of music as collective process related to space and time/here and now.

In conclusion I have to say that I like what I have heard and hope you like it too… it certainly needs some dedication, but if you succeed in finding the here and now for this music, you will get a rewarding experience. Repeated listening is recommended.

You can listen, download or buy it on Bandcamp

Read More

Echtzeit@30: Q&A with Robin Hayward

Robin Hayward. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

Explore Robin Hayward’s site here . Recent Releases include Sonic Drift with Martin Taxt and Peder Simonsen and a reissue of Live At ISSUE Project Room with Catherine Christer Hennix’ Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage.

FJB: What is echtzeitmusik to you? Is what might be considered echtzeitmusik connected through any approach, process, or sound result?

Robin Hayward: To be honest I wasn’t aware there was an ‘echtzeitmusik’ scene until I came to Berlin in 1998. I came to focus on exploring a particular approach to free improvisation that, unfortunately in my opinion, later came to be labelled ‘Berlin Reductionism.’ The Echtzeitmusik scene also came to be associated with this, though it’s clear that it was always more than this and that this approach only ever comprised one part of it.

Is there something material - like demographics, affordability, or cultural practices - about Berlin that you think makes such a scene possible?

When I first moved to Berlin I was pleasantly surprised how cheap the rents were, having moved from London. Although I had to teach English for the first two years after moving there, this meant I still had some time to focus on the music. The rents are becoming much more expensive now though.

In what ways do you think the scene has changed since your involvement and what might have caused these changes?

I think the people I was working with intensely when I first moved there - Annette Krebs, Andrea Neumann, Burkhard Beins and Axel Dörner - have mostly moved on to explore other musical directions. And there’s a whole group of other people exploring different things too. So it’s more varied than it used to be, at least from my perspective.

In what ways has the scene changed you and your musical practice?

That’s very difficult to say. I never really thought of it as being a scene actually, just a bunch of people whose musical interests overlapped for a while. We all influenced each other in different ways, but it feels a bit strange to say that that it was ’the scene’ that influenced me.

Are there any recordings, labels, venues, musicians, or other participants you would like to shout out for cultivating the scene, or that you feel are essential to it? And is there a recording of you or your work that you feel is particularly representative of the scene?

The recording I made with Roananax (with Annette Krebs, Andrea Neumann and Axel Dörner) in 1999 is probably the best document of what I was involved in back then. This was released much later by Another Timbre, I think in 2015, together with the trio Obliq (Pierre Borrel, Hannes Lingens and Derek Shirley). Of my solo work I think the CD / LP States of Rushing (released on Choose in 2009) best sums up what I was into in my first decade in Berlin. Since then I’ve been focusing on exploring the microtonal tuba, though I would like to go back and explore the ’noise-valve’ tuba more if I ever find the time to do so. Of the current venues I’d say the Labor Sonor series at Die Kule is probably the most reflective of the scene, along with Ausland.

What did you find in Berlin that was not in the UK?

The long winters. People can become very self-absorbed in Berlin too (myself included), so it’s definitely important to work outside of Berlin too.

- Q&A conducted by Keith Prosk

Read More

Matthias Müller Days: An Artist Deep Dive (Day 1)

By Martin Schray

Trombonist Matthias Müller is a musician who is somehow underrepresented on our blog, although he is an excellent improviser and has been playing with lots of the usual suspects such as John Edwards, Mark Sanders, Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, Johannes Bauer, Tobias Delius, Olaf Rupp, Paul Lovens, and many more. In addition, he is also active in the field of contemporary music and he also is a member of Berlin’s highly prolific Echtzeit scene. We will review three of his current projects - Foils Quartet, The Astronomical Unit and Rupp/Müller/Fischerlehner - in the following days, but other band like Superimpose (his duo with Christoph Marien), his trombone trio Posaunenglanzterzett with Johannes Bauer and Christoph Thewes or Trigger, a project with Chris Heenan and Nils Ostendorf with which he has just played in south German caves (hopefully there will be a DVD), should also be mentioned.

Müller’s musicianship is outstanding, he commands his instrument extraordinarily well using all kinds of mutes and circular breathing as well as extended techniques like overtones and overblowing. The recordings reviewed in the following days have all been released recently.

Foils Quartet: The Jersey Lily (Creative Sources, 2014) ****

Matthias Müller’s latest album is Foils Quartet’s ”The Jersey Lily“ with Frank Paul Schubert (ss) – a musician I admire since I’ve heard him on Fabric Trio’s “Murmurs” –, John Edwards (b) and Mark Sanders (dr). Müller and Schubert have already worked as a duo under the name of Foils (they have released their debut on FMR) before they decided to cooperate with Edwards and Sanders, who have also worked as a duo before (e.g. on “Nisus Duets” on EMANEM) and who have played as a rhythm group for some of the most outstanding musicians of the English improv scene (like Evan Parker or Trevor Watts).

From the very first note “The Jersey Lily” is almost classical free jazz, music that lives from the excellent communication between the participants. The contrast between the various tone colors of soprano saxophone and trombone is both unusual and attractive at the same time, yet there is a lot to discover beyond this obvious contrast. In general the quartet’s playing is very homogenous and on a very high energy level, which – especially on the more-than-50-minutes-track “Eddie’s Flower” – doesn’t die down, the music remains concentrated and tight. It demands a lot of agility and flexibility from the musicians – like two table-tennis doubles playing on world class level. Edwards and Sanders put constant pressure to the reeds, which is counterattacked by Schubert and Müller with all kinds of structures and sounds. Both take turns – when one is into fast runs and swift lines, the other one delivers longer notes or they simply duel with each other, which makes a finely spun net of honking, squawking, breathing, flapping and sultry reeds sounds. That’s why the band’s approach might be described as rather textural than narrative, but it is absolutely not a mere mind game, though. Even if the music is sonically investigative and intellectually challenging it is also emotional and gripping.

Or – as Clayton Thomas has put it in the liner notes for the first Foils album:

On the surface, we might hear the echo of Paul Rutherford and Evan Parker, but listening closely, the tempos are all wrong, the durations extended to the point of breaking, the counterpoint incongruous with that generations thinking. Another language is being spoken here, one that hears with (eight) ears all that Berlin (and British) improvisers have achieved in the past 15 years integrated with musicality and empathy.  

Slightly modified this goes for the quartet as well.

You can buy it from the label: http://www.creativesourcesrec.com/catalog/catalog_270.html

Watch a complete concert of the band here:

Read More

Axel Dörner, Roger Turner, Ra Ra da Boff – London Leipzig Berlin (Euphorium, 2015) ***½

By Martin Schray

If you have a look at the socio-economic conditions of improvised music you’ll find out that it is mostly an urban phenomenon. Most of the musicians live in metropolitan areas like New York, Chicago, Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Krakow or Vienna (to name just a few) because that is where you can find clubs and other musicians to jam with - in other words: a network. However, Axel Dörner (tp), Roger Turner (dr) and Ra Ra da Boff (electric organs, little instruments) try to find out if there is more to it and have named their album after the places they live - London Leipzig Berlin. The question is if these cities also have style-defining features for the process of improvising.

For the first time Roger Turner, one of the main protagonists of the British improvising scene, and Axel Dörner, the most important trumpeter of Berlin’s Echtzeit network, have joined forces here. Dörner’s trumpet is characterized by its formal severity and the attempt to find new, otherworldly sounds, something which can also be said about Turner’s way to play his drum kit. As in many of his collaborations he uses an arsenal of extended materials, and his contributions fizzle, clatter, rattle, scrape or jolt, rather than groove in a classic sense. It’s obvious that there is a huge intersection with Dörner’s vibrating, bubbling and muffled micro-environmental sounds, which creates a lot of high tension.

The glue that keeps these approaches together is Ra Ra da Boff, a pseudonym for Friedrich Kettlitz and Oliver Schwerdt (who enjoys using monikers like Birg Borgenthal or Elan Pauer). Of course the double Ra refers to Sun Ra and indeed it seems like two Sun Ras are sending pulsating signals from out of space that serve as spooky background buzz. Like electro-magnetic textures these organ sounds wobble through the improvisation, especially the bass booms in incredibly low frequencies (you need good speakers to enjoy this). Turner and Dörner sound as if they play in a shipyard, next to huge canvases whipped by a storm.

What appears a test arrangement built on the remnants of Art Brut is, in fact, the exact opposite: a clever creation of calculated differences like condensed drone clusters and tiny sound splinters, with an intensity that swells and ebbs away like bonfires that are kindled by sudden gusts of wind again and again.

This is indeed the soundtrack of cities at night, of the outskirts, the lonely places, industrial areas, tower blocks. If it is the specific sound of London, Leipzig and Berlin it is hard to tell. In any case, this is very urban music.

London Leipzig Berlin is available on CD. You can buy it from the label: http://www.euphorium.de/rubriken/records/records.htm

Read More