Otomo Yoshihide, Axel Dörner, Sachiko M, Martin Brandlmayr - Allurements Of The Ellipsoid

Otomo Yoshihide, Axel Dörner, Sachiko M, Martin Brandlmayr - Allurements Of The Ellipsoid (NEOS Music, 2010)

Otomo Yoshihide: turntable, guitar, electronics
Axel Dörner: trumpet
Sachiko M: sinewaves
Martin Brandlmayr: drums

Ce quartet, c'est avant tout la rencontre internationale (Japon, Allemagne et Autriche) de quelques uns des plus grands représentants des scènes minimalistes et réductionnistes. Mais aucun ne s'est enfermé dans cette esthétique, Brandlmayr peut aussi bien jouer de la noise-rock (avec Radian), quant à Dörner, il a accompagné Schlippenbach dans son entreprise de réinterprétation des standards de Monk, tandis que Yoshihide et Sachiko naviguent entre toutes les avant-gardes ou s'amusent aussi à réinterpréter des classiques du jazz (Lonely Woman, Bells, Out To Lunch).

Les quatre "allurements" proposées ici se situent dans la lignée de l'esthétique dite réductionniste, aucun doute. Cependant, le Quartet de Yoshihide évite avec virtuosité l'ennui et les clichés: ce qui n'est pas donné à tout le monde dans le domaine expérimental... La première pièce est totalement abstraite et froide, c'est une sorte de sculpture du silence, où chaque intervention prend des allures d'épiphanie, à condition d'accepter le voyage et de rester attentif. Un jeu très pointilliste, savamment calculé et d'une précision chirurgicale, voilà quelques uns des ingrédients qui donnent tant de force à chaque son qui émerge du silence où de l'espace accordé par chacun. Puis le temps se rétracte et l'écoute se facilite dans une deuxième pièce plus courte qui nous offre plus de repères: quelques pulsations, parfois même des phrases mélodiques, des motifs rythmiques répétés de manière sporadique, la trompette de Dörner qui se maintient dans un même registre (presque mélancolique). Et enfin vient le second disque, qui est vraiment la partie la plus réussie à mon avis. Ce n'est pas que la gestion du silence et de l'espace soit une solution de facilité, mais je suis beaucoup plus touché par le relief de ces deux dernières parties. Fondamentalement, le langage n'a pas changé, c'est plutôt le temps qui s'est encore rétracté: le discours devient plus violent, plus virulent, il y a parfois une sorte d'urgence qui contraste complètement avec la sérénité du premier disque. Et c'est à partir de là que nous sortons des clichés. L'énergie du rock comme de la noise apparaissent, l'intelligence de la musique savante pointe, la virtuosité des techniques étendues propres au réductionnisme est conservée mais mise au service de la créativité des idiomes l'improvisation libre. La construction devient plus collective, le son en tant que tel perd de son autonomie au profit d'une plus grande personnalisation, mais aussi au profit d'une création plus communautaire où l'on tend plus vers un son intersubjectif, où l'on se construit par rapport à l'autre tout en conservant sa singularité. 

Ces enregistrements peuvent comporter quelques longueurs dès que l'on se déconcentre, l'attention de l'auditeur est constamment nécessaire, ou alors on tombe facilement dans un ennui mortel. Mais dès que l'on accepte de jouer le jeu, on entre dans une musique riche, contrastée, et créative; une musique qui a l'intelligence de savoir organiser un matériau sonore peut-être déjà connu, déjà entendu, mais pas de cette manière. L'agencement, la configuration et la réunion de ces matériaux est frais, original et - je le répète - particulièrement riche. Hautement recommandé.(from ImprovSphere)

DISC 1  & DISC 2

Keith Rowe / Axel Dörner / Franz Hautzinger - A View From The Window

Keith Rowe - guitars, electronics
Franz Hautzinger - slide trumpet
Axel Dörner - quatertone trumpet

Press release from Erstwhile: April 2004

Trumpeters Axel Dörner and Franz Hautzinger transcend many of the aesthetic and geographical factions that have evolved over four decades of European free improv, contributing their gorgeous tones to a wide variety of contexts. On A View From The Window, they join forces with the intensely focused Keith Rowe, one of the sceneÕs founding fathers, and explore the abstract limits of their respective palettes.

RoweÕs history should be familiar to anyone following this area of music. Having mostly performed within AMM until the late nineties, heÕs since been involved in a wide range of projects, including a slew of the most prominent Erstwhile releases. HeÕs the cornerstone musician for the label, and is co-curating the upcoming AMPLIFY festival in Cologne and Berlin, AMPLIFY 2004: addition.

Dörner hails from Cologne, and has been living in Berlin since 1994. He is one of the busiest musicians in the European improv scene, working in projects ranging from free improv ensembles like the Territory Band and The Electrics to more abstract ensembles such as Phosphor and Lines. He recently put out a superb trio disc on Creative Sources with Boris Baltschun and Kai Fagaschinski. This is his second project for Erstwhile, following the self-titled duos with Kevin Drumm, released in 2001.

Hautzinger, based in Vienna, has recorded numerous projects for Grob, including the solo Gomberg, a duo with Derek Bailey, and Absinth (a quartet with Werner Dafeldecker, Sachiko M, and John Tilbury). He has worked with an impressive diversity of musicians, including Gil Evans, John Cale, Christian Fennesz, Otomo Yoshihide, Butch Morris, Phill Niblock, Lou Reed, and the Temptations. This is his first project for Erstwhile.

A View From The Window was recorded in a single day in Vienna in November 2003 by Christoph Amann, superbly as always. The CD captures these three musicians paring their signature sounds down to their essences, with the occasional plaintive trumpet cry or subtle radio snippet emerging from the delicate intertwining. Photojournalist Yuko Zama was in attendance for the sessions, and became drawn to the glimpse of sky visible through one of the studioÕs windows. She took dozens of pictures from different angles, and her fascination inspired Rowe to title the record after the Cardew quote (see below), and to paint a more 'optimistic' version of one of her photos for the front cover.

"...it is impossible to record with any fidelity a kind of music that is actually derived from the room in which it is taking place - its size, shape, acoustical properties, even the view from the window..." - Cornelius Cardew, Towards an Ethic of Improvisation

Here

Phosphor - Phosphor

Burkhard Beins: percussion
Alessandro Bosetti: soprano saxophone
Axel Dörner: trumpet, electronics
Robin Hayward: tuba
Annette Krebs: electro-acoustic guitar
Andrea Neumann: inside piano, mixing desk
Michael Renkel: acoustic guitar
Ignaz Schick: live electronics

This outing features a consortium of Berlin, Germany-based musicians who tend to explore the outer limits of abstraction via live electronics, acoustic instruments, and subversive dialogue. Less in your face than similar productions of this ilk, the instrumentalists create an air of suspense amid subdued moments and sparse frameworks. Andrea Neumann utilizes her stripped-down piano parts (strings, resonance board, metal frame & EFX) to counteract tubaist Robin Hayward, percussionist Burkhard Beins, and others for a set teeming with sparsely concocted themes. The octet provides a series of illusory effects in concert with moments of tension and surprise, due to its shrewd amalgamation of peculiar backdrops and concisely executed improvisational episodes. On Part 3 (no song titles), you will hear low-pitched gurgling noises and plucked strings. However, trumpeter Axel Dorner’s atonal hissing sounds cast a strangely exotic spell throughout many of these sequences. Not casual listening, but fascinatingly interesting - the music or noise, depending on which way you perceive it, rings forth like some sort of impressionistic souvenir. Sure, some of us may not include this release among the ongoing rotation. The content might parallel something akin to an avant-garde sculpture or oil painting: thus an artistic entity that deserves to be revisited from time to time.

2001 PHOSPHOR

Phosphor - Phosphor II

Burkhard Beins: percussion, objects, small electrics
Axel Dörner: trumpet, electronics
Robin Hayward: tuba
Annette Krebs: guitar, objects, electronics, tape
Andrea Neumann: inside piano, mixing board
Michael Renkel: prepared nylon string acoustic guitar via computer
Ignaz Schick: turntables, objects, bows

Phosphor, whose self-titled album came out in 2001, waited nearly five years to record its follow-up with Phosphor II. With editing, mixing and manufacturing, it has taken nearly eight years for the session to reach the marketplace.

With all that time that has passed, it is interesting to hear that the original super group, minus Alessandro Bosetti, can easily pick up right where it left off. These Berlin-based musicians practice the microtonal art of minimalist improvisation, yet their sound constructions are easily transferable to disc.

In fact, not having the visual component to their performance pushes the focus onto the sound, not which performer is making what sound—not always any easy thing to achieve.

The music here is, as Miles Davis once described it, about "the silence in between the notes." These eight compositions take that concept to the nth degree. Switches switch, air passes through instruments without notes, static takes the same place as rhythms, and electric charges fuel the tension that gives way to a cosmic release.

The sounds—noise, perhaps—are strangely inviting creatures whose vocabulary is one of a decayed future that meshes the human touch with computer and mechanical sounds that have slipped the moorings of beat and meter. (from ALLABOUTJAZZ)

2009 PHOSPHOR II

Nmperign + Dörner, Beins

Bhob Rainey: soprano saxophone
Greg Kelley: trumpet
Axel Dörner: trumpet
Burkhard Beins: percussion

2002 NMPERIGN + DORNER, BEINS
NMPERIGN INTERVIEWED by stylus magazine