Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Freq (under ongoing maintenance)

Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Désarroi

Freq — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 19:05:08 +0000

This creaks and groans at you in satisfying amounts. The double bass player pushing against the instrument’s confines in fricative flurries, like somebody scrambling over the tuneful core whilst struggling with an Ikea self-build. Detailed acoustics eating at that see-sawing harmonium, a Klezmer colour sway agitated by electronic mites or a sudden rush of guitar. A vibe that dissolves, tourniquets some tasty twilights. Apertures that sink into a horizon of notching machinery, steadily expanding into some rich sleazy juju. A lovely concoction of oblique guitar, sliding cello and regular mid-tempo drums bounding into an uncertainty of creaky floorboards and twisting willow.

It’s brilliantly realised stuff, with “Free Form Freak-Out” clawing an altogether darker hue which reminds me of the unnerving ambients of Throbbing Gristle’s Third Mind, but with more scenic contrast. Harbouring some lovely chaotic colour, full of rickety-legged drunkards and zitherfesting eels. A dissidence jazz that holds light for blissful songform that is “Evol” (mirror-written “Love”). A real game-shifter in breathy female vocals supplied by Heike Aumüller. “The more you love. The more you can love”, she repeats in tender tones that are over-run in electronics, vocals and musical backing curving in ultra-radiate, highly contemporary shivers of pure brilliance.

“Burned” is more shaman-whirred, a zephyr-jewelled gem of vague jazz wurm waggling into new tuneful shapes with muted film narration clinging on beneath as percussive claps and rebounds shift, divert, suck you into its microcosmic universe. “Unlösbar” continues the magic in saxophonic moonshine, before throwing an up-tempo fork into the mix, full of bent chords and crumbling intents, percussive reverses and explosive shapes wound into a wormhole, with “Saumselig” (“Dilatory”) a Lynchian-like conversation of tremolo(ing) tones and whirring rubs.

A cool cover version of S.Y.P.H’s “Zurück zum Beton” follows on the scattering wake of roosting bats, Aumüller returning to close the album, her mellow-worded flow accompanied by jazzy double bass flickers and the sequinned light of Moroccan finger plates. A spinning mirror-ball that transports the punkiness of the original into a smoky late-night Weimar basement.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-

Faust – Live at Klangbad Festival/Various Artists – Avant-Garde in the Meadows

Freq — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:32:08 +0000

Play Loud!

Although this DVD was released in late 2010, the footage — shot at the second annual festival held in Scheer, southern Germany — dates from 2005. Scheer is a small provincial town that since the late 90s has been the headquarters of Faust (or rather one of the two Faust factions, this being the one grouped around keyboardist Jochen Irmler and the Klangbad label). There are actually two films on the disc — a 70 minute record of Faust’s performance at the event, and a slightly longer film titled Avant-Garde in the Meadows which gives an overview of the festival’s three days.

The Faust performance features the aforementioned Jochen Irmler and one other figure from the group’s early ’70s origins, Arnulf Meifert, apparently absent from Faustian circles for many years before resurfacing to contribute percussion and noisemakers to this line-up, which is completed by the very wonderful Steven Wray Lobdell on guitar, Lars Paukstat on percussion and vocals, Michael Stoll on electric and upright bass, and Ralf Meinz (of Zeitkratzer) on drums. They’re shown playing in a marquee accompanied by a simple-but-effective psychedelic light show, and it’s an engrossing watch, as they run through a set of rumbling, propulsive pieces that successfully fuse organic and industrial elements in a way that has become this Faust’s trademark. Ralf Meinz may not have the elemental power of original Faust drummer Zappi W Diermaier but he keeps the whole thing driving along with aplomb. Lobdell, inscrutable behind dark glasses and a forest of hair and beard, scrubs at his guitar, emitting a hail of fire and lifting his bandmates’ dirge-like improvisations into molten psych-fuzz territory. That’s the basic MO throughout, although the musical territories explored range from some of the most straightforwardly structured rock ever to carry the Faust name (“Beat That”), to some of their most challenging scrabble and twitter abstraction, on “Dschungelbar”. This latter piece evolves into the best of the set, taking flight on a space funk underpinning that Michael Stoll conjures from his upright bass.

There’s an interesting insight into the group’s dynamics towards the end of this footage, when they finish the set and have a breather before some members return to the stage for an encore: this seems to take Paukstat and Lobdell by surprise, the former remonstrating with Irmler: “It was such a lovely ending.. it’s bullshit to play more” (helpfully subtitled for non-German viewers). But they work out the tension in another cauldron of improvisation, and everyone seems happy at the end.

Avant-Garde in the Meadows opens with a handheld camera view of a drive through picturesque smalltown Germany to the festival site, the only audio a faint electronic drone. Gradually we’re introduced to the sights and sounds of the festival – a chap asleep on a multi-coloured sofa in the great outdoors, a clanking iron bell, shots of tents, equipment, and people. Denizens of the Faust mailing list will spot some familiar faces here. Arnulf Meifert pops up and tells us that “Music should be understood as a form of communication,” after which we get into live footage of the various acts: Minit, Jutta Koether, Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Steve Lobdell playing solo, Lars Paukstat’s group Captain Howdy, Circle, an extract from the Faust performance, The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden, and Nista Nije Nista. It’s all of interest, from Minit’s arch synth-pop that takes a sudden detour into a full-blooded electronic storm, via Capt Howdy’s retro garage-rock (so rigorously correct in its adhrence to genre that it seems oddly fresh in this context) through to the One Ensemble’s striking meld of singer-songwriter acid-folk and acoustic improv breakdown. Along the way we get plenty of festival colour, the film-makers successfully capturing the outdoor setting and relaxed atmosphere of the event. We also take a drive to Faust’s studio and workspace in the company of Jochen Irmler, who explains that Klangbad was launched in 1997 after “we came to the conclusion that you have to do everything yourself.” Have the group faced any problems from their smalltown neighbours, asks the interviewer? No… well yes… a bit, last year, muses Jochen, before explaining that by inviting concerned locals to come and see the festival for themselves, it was possible to show people that the whole thing is in essence an “extended living room.”

The strangest performance here is saved till last: Nista Nije Nista (“nothing is not nothing”) are a quartet of young women from various parts of the globe, who appear here in a kind of Kraftwerk-like group identity, with spy-movie raincoats instead of business suits, and play an extraordinary mix of electronics, percussion, and what appears to be a sewing machine. The effect is something like a lo-fi, cyberpunk take on Laurie Anderson‘s vocal and electronics experiments, but if all this sounds dauntingly arty and high-concept, it isn’t: in fact it’s refreshingly free of that kind of baggage. It’s fascinating stuff, and the intrigue is heightened by an interview snippet in which all four Nistas answer a question simultaneously, producing a mysterious group babble before lapsing back into silence and favouring the interviewer with (apparently) guileless smiles. There’s a long pause, before he says “Danke,” and we learn no more about this oddly compelling group, as baffling as they are winning.

The combination of the two films makes this disc more than worthwhile — while nothing here quite reaches the heights of Nobody Knows If It Ever Happened, the superb DVD filmed live at The Garage in London in 1996 (in simpler times when there was only one Faust), it’s nevertheless a must for anyone with an ongoing interest in the strange and turbulent legend(s) of Faust.

-Manfred Scholido-

Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Hysteria

Freq — Fri, 03 Mar 2000 20:10:36 +0000

Label: Bubblecore (North America)/Payola (Europe/Afterhours (Japan) Format: CD

A high-pitched crackle like the malfunction angel coming to take your stereo away. Dulcet bass repetition and skittering percussion make a strange and uneasy juxtapose of quite lovely and what’s-that-noise? A warbling, wobbling sense of trying to move around in the world. Now a homey sort of gentle creaking, a tentative whistling, and then the sax and drums – another run through the deserted streets of the city in the afternoon. It’s a very interesting kind of fuck music – the kind which needs a happy medium (volume-wise) in order to operate properly. Well, if you’re using it as fuck music, that is.

And what is music used for? How insidious is music in the Modern Age – how intimately have we grasped it to our hearts and injected it into our lives at large? Must it always have a purpose? Or can it exist solely as a work of art – it is what it is – but just what is it?

There is an unusual gentleness in the sounds – without resorting to the complete shyness of ultra-minimalism or the blank page. It’s as if insects are communicating all around the speakers and wondering which way to move, down a the tumbling waterfall of squeaks and creaks. Strings skip by like a CD as metal reverberates and the waterfall empties into a crackling, brighter land of hope and multiple EPs

-David Cotner-