░█
████ ░░▓██░▓██░▓█ ███
█ ▓███ ███████████████████ ██░█ █████
██ ▓██ ░▓▓█████░███▓███░░░████ ██░ █ ██ ████
█▓ ▓███ ▓██████████▓████░ ░░███ ██▓ ██ █████░ ████
██░ ▓███░▓█▓██░▓████░ ░░░░░░░███▓ ██ █░ █░░ ███
█▓██░ ▓██████░███░ ░░░███████░█▓░░█ ███ ███ █░ █░ ██
██░██░ ▓▓██░███░ ░░█████░███████░██ █░█░ █░█▓ █░░ █░░ ██
██ ██░░███████░ ░░██████░█▒█▒████▓█ ██░█▒ █ ██░ █░░░░████░ ██
█▓ ██▓█ ░██░ ░░████▓░░▓███░█▓▀████ █░ █▓ █ ░█▓ ██████▓█ █░
██░▓██ ░█░░████▓░ ░██░ █░ ██ ██░ █▓ █ ██░██░ ██░ ███░ ██░
▓█▓█ ░░░ ░████▓░ ▓█░ █ █░ █▓ █ ░█▓█░ █░ ██▓██░ ██▓▒
░██ ░▄███ ██▓▓░ ████░ ░███▓███ ██░ █▓░█ ███░ █░░██▓▓░█░░░██▓▒
██ █▓ █ █▓░ ░█ ░▓███░██░ ░▓██ ██░ ████ ░██░ █░██▓▓ ▀████▓▓
▓██ █░ █░ █░ █ ░▓██ ▓██ █░ █░░ ███▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓
░▓███░ █▓ █░ █░█░░ ░ ░▓█ ██░ ████ ██░ ██▓▓
░▓█████░ ██▓░░▄ ░█ ██▓░ ░█░ ░████ █░ █▓▓█ ░█░░ ██▓▓
███████▓ ███░ ░██ ▓███▒░░ ░▒████████ ██░ █▓░█ ██░░██▓▓
████████▓░░ ░██ ░░▓███████████▓████▓██ █░ █▓ █ ░████▓▓
███▓ ░▓████░░░ ███░ ░█████████████░ ▓██░ ▓█ █░░ █▓ █ █▓█▓▓
▓░ ▄████░██████▓░ ░████████▓ ░▓█░ ▓███░█ █████████▓ ██████████▓▓
░ █▀ ▓█░░ ████░ ░▓▓▒▒░░ ░▓████░ ░█░██▀ ░▒▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ ▓█▒░░░▒█▓▓
█ ▓██████▓ ██ ▓▒██░ █▓ █████ ░█████▓▓
░ ▀██▄ ▓█▓█▓░ █▀▀█░ █▓ █▓ ▓██ █ "HiGH ░▒▓▓▓▓ iNTELLiGeNCE tRoLLS"
▀█ ██░ ▓▒▒░▒▒▓ ██░ ██ █▓░ █▓░ ░▓█░ ██ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄
▄███▀ █▓▒ ░░██░ █░░ █░██▓░░ ░▓██░ █▄ █▀░ ▀██ ▀█ ▄██▄
░ █▀ █▓▒ ░███░ ░░▓█░ ██░█████████░ █▓█ █░ █▓ █▄█ ░█░
█ ░░ █▓ ░▒█░ ▒▒ █░░ ████████████░░██░▓█ █▓▒░██ █░ █▀ ░██▓
█ ░ █▓▒ ░▒░ ▒ ██░░░ ██░ ▀████ ░▓ ▀████░ █ ███▓
▀█▄ ██▓ ▓░ ▒▓ ██████░ ░░░░░░ ░▒█ ▄█░ ███ ███▓▓
▀█ ██▓ ░ ░█ ░▓██▓▓▓▓██ ░░░▒██ ▄█ █████░ ░██▄
▄█ ██▒░ ░██░░ ░▒▓███▓░░ ░▓███████ ▄█░ ██▀ ▀█░ █▄ ░█▄
░░▒▓▓▀ ██▒░ ░█████████▓░ ░▒▓█ █░ ▀ ▄█░ ███ ░█▄
░[PR] ████▒░ ▓░░░░░░░ ░▒█ ▀█▓░ ▄███▓░▄█▓ █ ░█░
████▓▓▒▒░ ░▒▒▓██░ ▀█████▓▓▀███▓▓ ███▓
██████████████████████▓ ░▓▓▓▓ ░▓▓ ░▓▓▓
a r t i s t : FOURinONE
t i t l e : #40 Vienna & #41 Bernbeuren, 2003
d a t e : 2004
l a b e l : X-OR (fr13)
g e n r e : Jazz
r l s. d a t e : June/2005
t r a c k s : 05
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 72,5 MB
_______________________________________________________________________
"FOURinONE denotes the complete surrender of 4 individual
musicians to 1 magic ensemble whose subtle, kaleidoscopic
soundscapes will reveal their wonders to the listener only
step by step."
FOURinONE:
martin blume - percussion
johannes bauer - trombone
luc houtkamp - reeds
dieter manderscheid - double bass
#40 recorded at Blue Tomato Jazz Club, Vienna on 1 November
2003; #41 recorded at Nigglmuhle, Bernbeuren, Germany on 2
November 2003.
All compositions by Blume, Bauer, Houtkamp & Manderscheid.
This is a release in the 'field recording' series, a series of
live and/or private recordings of the latest music, in a
limited edition of 500 numbered copies.
--------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW
by Mike Heffley
17 February 2005
(http://www.onefinalnote.com/reviews/f/fourinone/vienna-bernbe
uren.asp)
In 1997, the summer before Johannes Bauer formed the band on
this CD, I saw him perform in various contexts around Berlin:
At Kulturhaus Peter Edel's final concert, with Peter Brotzmann
and drummer Shoji Hano, with his older brother Conrad in their
two-bone/two-guitar group DoppelMoppel, with trumpeter Axel
Dorner and a post-rock guitarist in a hole-in-the-wall called
Anorak, and with his similarly East-Berlin-edgy guitar-horn
band Slawterhaus. On CD, I heard him play in duo with Conrad
(Bauer Bauer) at an historic German war memorial and a
European cathedral (with Fred Van Hove on its organ, Pijp),
and in trio with Van Hove and Annick Nozati (Organo Pleno).
That butterflying variety is reflective of his now 35-year
professional career. It bespeaks an adaptable versatility that
explains much about why he escaped the doldrums that befell
many of his East German colleagues when the Wall fell and
their world changed. However, it paints a picture somewhat at
odds with the one this CD paints. Most of Bauer's many
different contexts are not the ad hoc hookups of an
opportunistic freelancer; DoppelMoppel and Slawterhaus have
been longstanding groups, and the people he plays with in
different combinations are largely from the same circle.
But this CD is most redolent with another gig I caught that
summer, one itself redolent with East German as much as
BauerÆs own personal history in the music. It was a trio with
his younger brother Matthias on bass and British drummer Mark
Sanders, at East BerlinÆs oldest continuously operating jazz
club, the Jazzkeller at Parkhaus Treptow. As such a venerable
undergroundish institution in a hardened major city, it
compares with, say, Birdland, or the Village Vanguard in New
York. Once inside, it's also similar in the homey sense of
cultural-musical history, and the bonhomie of the staff and
regulars, many of whom have grown old with it. The difference
is that it's stuck in a quiet, out-of-the-way block of a
noncommercial neighborhood, like some Elks Club in the
basement of a sleepy community center after closing time.
The players and fans meet there like a chess club renting a
space for the night, which is the way it worked in the
pre-Reunification East. The sound I heard there is most like
FOURinONE's: No sexy flashes of avant-gardism or free-jazz
primal scream, no novel instrumentations, rock-, art-, or
world-music fusions with improvised music; post-free-jazz
vocabulary, to be sure, but sung and spoken in the deep
context of a Western music history (including American jazz)
that was never as renounced in the East as in the West. The
result, after 40-plus performances over seven-plus years, is a
standard pianoless jazz quartet of bonded brothers making a
music that goes down as easy on the CD player in the
background at home as would a tasty set by your favorite
mainstream sophisticates.
Trying to describe and assess free improvisation can feel like
an exercise in futility. What is the point of charting this or
that turn of the wind, or of a feather flying on it? But if
you do so, you almost always chance upon a pattern or two,
then a larger design behind those, that suggest a plan or
intention or script that you know doesnÆt, canÆt exist as
such. The first three tracks are all from the later date, at
Nigglmuhle, a classy little jazz and improvised-music club in
Bernbeuren. This is upper Bavarian country - pristine, alpine,
upscale clean, and touristy, as well as historic and
grassroots, like many such communities in the region. Opposite
in feel to both East Village and East Berlin, but as open to
the music spawned in both, if not more so.
"41a" opens things like a five-minute warm-up in the quiet
style of English noise music. Clicks and clacks and tom-y
slaps in drums, bow-tapping bass, mutes, squeaks, and tongue-y
slaps in the horns, mostly high and gruff; occasional glimpses
of pitch, as if previewing more to come. The noodling bears
with itself until it feels like it's taken some kind of shape,
in the rocky-sandy river of drums and the elephant kazoo of
the horns.
"41b" unfolds like an expansion on that sketch, branching from
its single arc into more discernibly distinct sections. Bauer
opens up the midrange, tenor saxophonist Luc Houtkamp holds
forth in Saxsprech, intervals out of Monk's "Misterioso" make
their frames. Restraint waxes even as intensity and
interaction do, as players drop out and come back in, gracing
all possible combinations, not shying from delicate sonority,
or melodic tonality, when the sheerly percussive noise seems
ripe to bear it. By the end of the trackÆs 14 minutes, the
loud, strong Prussian brass Bauer loves and its squealy sax
counterparts come like a climax well earned and undeniable.
"41c" transcends both the overture and measured suite above
with what the Germans call Dramaturgie in the music: A sense
that something more than music on the fly is afoot. The East
Germans especially have worked this concept to good effect
from its first hours, and this track is reminiscent of some of
the classic early free-jazz recordings by Conrad and his
Synopsis bandmates "Just for Fun, The Old Song" in the way it
milks the most conventional fundamentals for the most
far-flung improvisational freedom. In this case, that
foundation is simply the minor third. Houtkamp sounds it,
trills it, Dieter Manderscheid strums it, Martin Blume drums
around it soft and ominous... and Bauer takes care, atonally,
never to state it, always to hover, fly, stomp, and slide
around it, angrily, longingly, dramaturgidly...
The Blue Tomato, site of the two final tracks, is another
variation on the jazz club this music evokes. One long
basement-level room in the heart of Vienna, not too far south
and over the border from Bavaria, it is no dump or remote
Jazzkeller, but clean, well maintained, even posh and
tourist-friendly while still in character as home to this
music and its most serious fans. A short walk from it is St.
Stephen's over 600-year-old cathedral and Franz Josef's
imperial complex; more to the point here, Mozart, Beethoven,
Mahler, and Schoenberg are all buried within a few kilometers
of it. Being there, knowing that, is to hear this music as
part of an ongoing conversation between Europe, America, and
Africa. The American and African utterances are as clear as
ever, but the European voice stands forth most, with its own
timely urgency, on its own old ground, making its own new
points.
"40a" spells out what those points are. The same noodling
ramble that started the first two tracks starts this one too,
only here the trombone is unmuted and alternating between the
highest and lowest possible sounds it can make, as if
discussing with itself its limits. Manderscheid and Blume
chime in with similar serious stretches, into most ringing
metal and strongest plucked strings that signal a real
conversation, no mumbling at or past or beside each other.
This spirit intensifies when Houtkamp joins in, quickly
turning the two horns into one lonely, honky beast making
evolution happen through natural selection and mutation both,
just to be on the unsafe side.
The energy of this builds to short circuit around minute ten,
through Bauer's lip-slurring romp mating primate with
elephantine SprechgesΣng, thence into a few Prussian shouts
that devolve into donkeyÆs brays. Then silence. Then another
five full minutes more of that silence, broken sharp and woven
around by other such noisesùmore brays, then car horns - still
a conversation, still some kind of order, grumbly chattery
noodling creeping back in between the hushes and crashes and
bleats... until it levels out into a meld of GerΣuschmusik
(noise music) and something you want to call contemporary,
powerful jazz.
By the 20th minute, its collective mind rouses itself into a
summing up, a grand, reverent wisdom, in which a balance of
extremes makes a warm, three-minute flow, winds down into a
tonal terrain Bauer scouts out with care, where Houtkamp can
pitch in with him in duo to ease the music out... then into
the bass alone, which arpeggiates said terrain in fleeting
throwaways suggesting Jimi Hendrix quoting Bach, before
unraveling further back into the primal dribble of noise.
"40b" unwinds the group much like "41a" wound it up, from no
time to Know Time, with all the same vocabulary, to say
something else, then stop.
The points spelled out? In short, that this music is a
deconstruction and reconstruction of Europe, by Europe, for
Europe, not by America or Africa for one or the other of them.
Where liner notes usually go, this CD has four columns of 45
numbered concert dates and their venues, from December 1997 to
November 2004. The statement this makes: The quartet FOURinONE
is making one body of work in the world that inhabits at this
point these 45 times and places; the CD is a specific slice of
that bodyÆs ongoing life. The titles in such a naming system
are, of course, arbitrary. Each track is simply a session of
unscripted improvisation, not a Werk planned or named, either
before or after its performance, to distinguish its identity
from other such creations. Whatever selection and ordering
principles went into this CDÆs particular sequence, it has a
certain shape and effect in time, on the ear, and some things
can be more accurately said than others about that. One is (as
Anthony BraxtonÆs first application of such a system to his
own body of work has also demonstrated) that the project of
the Western canon applies to improvised as well as composed
music. It doesnÆt have to - improvised music doesnÆt need its
imprimatur - but some of its most seminal and self-schooled
voices have seen fit to adopt it as most suitable, apparently
for some good reason.
_______________________________________________________________________
01-# 41a [04:58]
02-# 41b [13:42]
03-# 41c [07:24]
04-# 40a [27:11]
05-# 40b [05:05]
-------
58:20 min