Bunte Truppe – Träumen Ohne Dinge

Play Loud!

Filled with a plethora of recursing rhythmic elements, the mournful voice of a soul in non-specific agony (perhaps), scraping on an atonal violin while the rattle of snares and toms lurches across woodblock clacks, cuckoo-clock chimes, distended balloon rubs and woodwind tones. Free music can be a mighty force with which to be assailed, and Bunte Truppe offer up their particular variety of skronk and parp with vigour and no small measure of aplomb on Träumen Ohne Dinge.

The album is filled with plenty of reflective ripple and clangorous runs on the inside of something metal, sounding like it is being brushed with a rasp or file by Limpe Fuchs. So much for the metalwork – there’s also the sound of a home-made carillon somewhere, and the more conventional instrumentation bent into unconventional if not unfamiliar shapes by Fuchs, Ignaz Schick, Ronnie Oliveras and Ruth-Maria Adam.

Texture reigns supreme, emotion follows the musical paths less travelled and feedback and apparent snorting into a plastic pipe might be something to be celebrated (and when is it not?). Vocals are hinted at more than expressed, and that ever-enjoyable trope of the percussionist falling down stairs is made present and righteously (in)correct.

It’s the sort of scrapyard odyssey in which to become lost, as if being led blindfold among teetering stacks of distressed and deracinated junk that has been imagined afresh as musical instruments, even those that were already once categorised as such. Träumen Ohne Dinge lets such distinctions become ones of tradition and description more than practice, taking their own merry route from a to q via x and maybe ! and ~ too. Lodged between gleeful and insouciant, the group are evidently fully absorbed in the creation and curation of their anti-music, and this dedication is transmitted with a serious playfulness that whirrs and hums as often as it clatters and crunches.

Träumen Ohne Dinge manages the difficult task of retaining interest over two sides of vinyl in a form of sound generation, or yes, perhaps music, without losing their listeners along the way, and their live audience obviously thought so too, applauding fulsomely at the end of “Goldocker”; even if their number sounds small, it makes up for this in enthusiasm. Bunte Truppe demonstrate that this sort of thing done well is worthy of such a response, especially done with the deftness and lightness of touch they offer up on Träumen Ohne Dinge.

-Antron S Meister-

Träumen Ohne Dinge is available to buy direct from Play Loud! here.