Excellent! More Limpe Fuchs goodness leaks out of Berlin-based Play Loud!, this time stretching back to the late seventies when she was an integral part of a duo called Anima-Sound with her husband Paul.
Collecting together a series of live recordings made during the 1977 festival at Castle Moosham in the Lungau region of Salzburg, Austria, Im Lungau is an artefact saved from the brink and lovingly restored for your listening pleasure. Im Lungau provides a rare snap-shot of the live experience they would have paraded up and down the country from out the back of their converted tractor back in the day, and for me makes for a perfect companion to their Monte Alto LP I picked up a few years back on my the second Fort Process outing.
Diving straight in, Im Lungau starts by redefining the slide guitar into this elasticated beast with a magnetic drool that’s ripe for ribcage xylophonics to skeleton before introducing more percussives to conversant its curves. It’s a lovely haphazard / happened-upon vibe oozing a strangeness that spills over into the second track’s weird intoxicates. A darkened beauty that has Limpe’s vocals lyrically pucker this eastern harp-like zither, tight-roping its strummed fermentations, jumping off in glinting angles with the odd screechy emphasis. For me, the vocal rub of this recording hits the spot, as does her sporadic drum technique, but it’s great to hear how this duo jigsaws and feeds off each other.A journey full of inky diversions and scribble-outs, crossed swords full of consequential reaction — what fits or fights with what, and the conversations that spontaneously bounce. The instruments were mostly custom-made or salvaged, adding in unfamiliar flavours to that Paul Klee-like playfulness as the ramshackled drum-kit heretics the flow of percussives that stipple-fish, bicker like ceramic moths on a window pane. They provide plenty of agitating bite that needles the swarking phonics of “Duo 4” or working up an almost rocked-out vibe on “Duo 3” replete with Janis Joplin-like abstracts.
The sixth and longest track here has a solo Limpe working through her percussive ensemble on a track full of knitting patter and luminous licks in simple explorations full of stumbled-upon magic. The sheesh of metal, the kaleidoscopic kilter of that zessshy cymbal action, her smarting vocals that momentarily leap the jangle of those percussive knocking knees, the delicate bell-like dynamics of its latter end yodelling a sweet and undeniably Slapp Happy return.Again, those little snippets of voice make this recording a must-have. The trumpet-like rasp and pattering combo of “Duo 5” getting a bit ‘Blue Note’ as it expressively radiates in tiny sea-horsing blooms. There is a loose camaraderie that zooms between the two as a lyrical vibe rolls out on a heartbeat roll of percussives, and Limpe’s voice chants across the droning bursts to rapturous applause. The surprise Moroccan flavours fill the last track, all fiery cobra flute and boxing tincan, their wavy transits momentarily blurring colour and boundary, before tightening the focus to slip away from your grasp completely.
It’s always a pleasure to have more Limpe Fuchs in my life, and this handsome collection will tide me over whilst I patiently wait for the label to re-release Musik Für Alle back into the world.-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
Order Im Lungau direct from Play Loud! here.
