Kammerflimmer Kollektief
Incommunicado
[Payola/Temporary Residence; 2001]
Rating: 7.1
I imagine there must be a number of record store managers out there still
wondering who or what this Kammerflimmer Kollektief is. After all, while Thomas
Weber (the man behind the name) isn't exactly flooding the shelves with releases
as quickly as say Acid Mothers Temple, he's still had three releases hit the bins
stateside in little under a year. Two of those releases (both Mäander and
this newest on Temporary Residence) were domestic issues of once import-only
discs, while the recent Hysteria was a new recording for Japan's After
Hours label. With three titles (and likely another on the way, noting Weber's
prolific nature) in such a short time, many people out there might be scratching
their heads wondering which, if any, of these titles to pick up. So, where does
Incommunicado stack up next to the other two? Well, it's somewhere in the
middle.
In contrast to Payola label mates Tied and Tickled Trio (whose contributors
usually number anywhere from 5 to 12 members), this "kollektief" started out as
just one guy doing everything. But sometime after those first singles, Weber
must've figured the band should live up to its name, so he recruited five other
skilled musicians who've since stuck around. While Weber busied himself with
electronic manipulations and studio tricks on Hysteria, there's no sign
of it here as he plays only guitar. In fact, excepting Anne Vortisch's
synthesizer, this is the most organic recording for the group to date.
Those familiar with Mäander might spot a few recognizable track names on
this release. The title Incommunicado means "improvisations" and that
seemed to be the impetus for this experiment. Apparently, Weber handed out
copies of that earlier release to members of his sextet and asked them to study
the song structures, tone and composition for a future recording. The result is
what we have here. A clever ploy by Weber to recycle previously used material?
Not so much. The three carry-over tracks ("Nachtwach," "Gras" and "Rand") are
faintly identifiable incarnations of earlier versions. They've been altered in
every shape imaginable, sometimes stretching out onto a lengthier jazz terrain
and sometimes veering out of control, reduced to disruptive sax squawks, shrieks
and machine-gun percussion.
These loose improvisations do a stellar job retaining Kammerflimmer's distinctive
sound of rhythmic tensions building into explosive bursts of noise. "Nachtwach"
slinks into the picture first and it becomes obvious immediately that this isn't
going to be Weber's show. Reduced to mainly a background fixture on guitar, this
album belongs to bassist Johannes Frisch and saxophonist Dietrich Foth. Frisch
wastes no time launching the band out of the gate and digs his heels in as the
band pieces together a new version of Weber's composition. That characteristic
blast of noise still makes its presence known, though. Playing around the
original theme at the start, the sextet eventually careens after a few minutes
into Foth's high register squeals and Michael Ströder's punctuated bouts with
the drum kit.
The identifiable "Gras" follows and the group immediately references the original
track before slowly assembling a wholly new sound entity. Building at a much
slower pace than anything else on the disc, the group allows space and silence
to have as vital a role in this piece as their playing. Extending far past the
12-minute mark, this is just about as quiet and evocative a song as anything
they've ever done. Violinist Heike Wendelin and Foth begin to fill the space
with sporadic noises, quivering drones out of the violin and tiny squeaks from
the sax. About 10 minutes in, things start to get a little haywire as Frisch
begins to bang his bow against the bass strings. Ströder at times pretends he's
keeping time with a marching band, while Foth sends forth a handful of shuddering
shrieks from the sax. Stretching out into epic territory, "Gras" is the finest
moment here. It's reliant as much on sparseness and Kammerflimmer's members
listening to each other as it is the group playing together. With seemingly no
pressure to sustain the ordinary rhythmic tension, the individual members are
able to explore different sound regions and bounce new ideas off each other.
Along with the other two Mäander tracks, there's "Rand,"a truncated sound
detonation that ends as quickly as it begins. Lasting only 50 seconds, it's a
feverish, ecstatic blast with every member playing as loud and abrasive as the
next. Coming off like a live, improvised version of Weber's signature burst of
static hiss and tape noise, the worst part about the song is its abruptness; it
ends so quickly it leaves the listener salivating for more. Instead of lurching
into something expected like a dissonance-filled wall of sax wail and shrill
violin, the band quickly drifts into a Robert Wyatt cover: "Venti Latir" from
his early 90s EP A Short Break. It's a beautiful violin-driven update of
the original, lilting gently back and forth on Wendelin's strings. It's a rarity
for Weber's group, placing more emphasis on the swaying melody than rhythm or
shaping the tension.
The final two tracks are new songs, "Kissen" and "Holler." The first of the two
is a directionless drone centered on the synthesizer, violin and bass. Problem
is, the band doesn't really allow itself enough space or time to pull the track
into anything more than a gliding mess and the whole thing ends up sounding out
of place. "Holler," on the other hand, is a sheer delight. It's less than a
minute of Frisch vehemently scraping his bow across the bass strings, the result
being something analogous to that of John Cale or Tony Conrad's abrasive string
treatments in Dream Syndicate.
With only six tracks (three of those being revisions of earlier songs),
Incommunicado might seem to fall short. However, this is an album that
requires time to unfold. I'm in the unique position of having been one of the
people who bought the earlier import version of this, which was released almost
simultaneously with Mäander overseas. Having had time to digest this album
more than I normally would with a review, I can say that, at first, it seems like
a disjointed affair with tracks like "Gras" wandering purposelessly around and
the bursting "Rand" and "Holler," which both stand in contrast to that meandering
exploration. But given repeated listening and time to unfurl, the pieces here
stand alongside the best stuff in Weber's bag of tricks, proving that he's as
adept in the group improvisation setting as he was flying solo in the studio.
-Luke Buckman, November 5th, 2001