Like the eclectic elasticity of Holger Hiller‘s earlier band Palais Schaumburg squeezed into an avant-sparked groove, Ein Bündel Fäulnis In Der Grube is one of those albums close to my heart.
The jarring orchestral octopus that is “Liebe Beamtinnen Und Beamte” was and still remains a revolution soaked in the sonic possibilities early sampling tech had to offer. An impulsive assault on musicality that leads you to the utter joy that is the next track.
A track that finds “Blass Schlafen Rabe”’s sleeping raven caught in the tumble of some synthesised ambulance / car horn honk. A Keystone Cops comedy that sizzles in its simplicity, finds Holger a zombified poet in a driven piano gallop beset in peculiar interjections and shifting signatures that insistently flood you with plenty of pigeon-toed footwork.The barefooted artist collaging the cover slips easily into your mind, maybe parodying Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” paper drop as a rush of connections dance the disconnect. A bargain of beguiling concrete that fills the lullabying abstraction of “Budapest – Bukarest”. A track maybe conceived on a train journey between the two locations, its skittery sonics seem to suggest so, as whistle, bell and reverse-breath palette knives fly out on mechanical birdy noises, marbled in a Forbidden Planet’ sci-fi.
Arty magic that taps into something more than commodity, swims straight into its earwormed antithesis, “Jonny (Du Lump)”. A drum-fuelled, knee-swerving suaveness of a track that I’ve loved for so long now, that Cherry Red 12-inch being my initial entry point to Holger’s solo sound world. A strange Northern Soul baggy-trousered quality that’s still great to throw shapes at on the dance floor. A palatable perfection from which the rest of the album dials back from in favour of the more experimental, a nimble “Neue” that would be refined further on his next album, Oben Im Eck. Enquiring explorations that lead to the calculated jumble sale of repetitive shunts and scratchy misappropriation that is “Akt Mit Feile (Für A. O.)”, a rackety typing pool skeleton that feels like a stripped-down remix of the previous track in gritty drumskin and guitar bite.His Spidey sense for the random riches is phenomenal, skitter-scatters in greedy disassociations. Sets the artist singing absent-minded along to a bleeping skipping rope on “Hosen, Die Nicht Aneinander Passen” or salad dresses a Palais Schaumburg jackfruit of quick-fired samples, brittle-batted in some jangly (disco) of robotic rotors on “Chemische Und Physikalische Entdeskungen”.
Holger’s playful intellect seems dizzy with discovery, high on the volatile vocabulary of the everyday re-configured into some bizarre bio-engineered clockwork on “Ein Bündel Fäulnis In Der Grube”. Those frayed ends of “Das Feuer”‘s juxtapositions knotting into an unexpected and profoundly tuneful resolution. A fascinating insight finally disappearing into the nursery-like word play of “Ein Hoch Auf Das Bügeln”, its handclaps and spasmodic symphonics mirror-surfing a softened cartoon-like demise.I’m so glad to have this beauty back in the world – thanks Bureau B.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
