Rudi Mahall - Quartett

RUDI MAHALL - Quartet (Jazzwerkstatt, 2007)

Rudi Mahall: bass clarinet
Johannes Bauer: trombone
Aki Takase: piano
Tony Buck: drums
1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
5. V

HERE

Peter Brötzmann, Peter Ole Jørgensen, Peter Friis Nielsen & Johannes Bauer - The Wild Mans Band

Peter Brötzmann, Peter Ole Jørgensen, Peter Friis Nielsen & Johannes Bauer - The Wild Mans Band (Ninth World, 1997)

Peter Brötzmann: clarinet, tenor saxophone, tárogató
Peter Friis Nielsen: bass
Peter Ole Jørgensen: drums
Johannes Bauer: trombone

1-DT 104
2-Nymphalis Antiopa
3-Dead Mans Camp
4-Unfaithful Ant
5-Towers
6-Omnibus
7-Mad Cow Disease

Recorded in Copenhagen in 1997, this quartet is truly a group of wild men. The three Peters on reeds, bass, and drums, respectively, and trombonist Johannes Bauer create a new European improvisation music that is full of humor, rage, abstraction, and even perversion. Playing through a brief introduction of sequence variations, the disc really opens with "Nymphalis Antipoa," a six-minute tonal study that features Bauer exploring the nether regions of his instrument while Brötzmann plays through a restrained dark melody before giving way to a fragmental bass solo by Jørgensen on electric bass. Nothing rises above a whisper and no statement is played for more than a note or three on the way to tonal equity. This is short-lived, however, as the entire record explodes into a war-zone free for all on "Dead Man's Camp." This is the kind of music one would expect from this bunch and it never stops from here on out. Brötzmann is the gang leader and his wailing skeins of cascading scalar fury infect the rest of the band. Bauer answers his lines in a free kind of counterpoint and then extends the broken harmonic into a timbral circus. Friis Neilsen is the one who is most on his own though, as the short, clipped basslines give him little to go on except for the "texture" of rhythm. But on he goes, digging deep into his cymbals for ballast and pushing forth great heaving sighs of tom-tom thrumming atop the scattered rim shots that punctuate both saxophone and trombone. This is an exhaustive and exhausting exercise in free jazz tomfoolery of the best and wildest kind. (from AMG)

HERE

Johannes Bauer / Thomas Lehn / Jon Rose - Futch

Johannes Bauer: trombone
Thomas Lehn: analogue synthesizer
Jon Rose: violin, electronics

There are several things that seem impossible about the Fucht trio. Their mesh of instruments — Conrad Bauer's trombone, Thomas Lehn's analogue synthesizer, Rose's violin and electronics — is an unlikely amalgamation, fat in the midrange and, with neither frets nor valves, ripe with slippery indeterminacy. The players, too, are an unlikely combination: Rose is a tireless conceptualist, making music out of political borders and rewriting economics and history like a viol-centric Marco Polo. While Bauer played previously with Rose in the Slawterhouse quartet, he is better known in adventurous jazz realms, having played with Peter Brötzmann, Barry Guy, Ken Vandermark and Alan Silva. Lehn can usually be found in the hotter end of less idiomatic free improv with John Butcher, Cor Fuehler and the group Konk Pack. The name they've chosen for themselves, German for "gone" or "spoiled" suggests something about their group work, although it might just as much be misleading.

But what is most unlikely about their disc, recorded over two sessions in 2006, is how impossibly close all the sounds are. The album drills maddeningly into the brain from the first moments. There is no background here, no comping or accompaniment, no division of duties. They could almost have been a proper trio: Lehn's ever mutating pops and whistles are generally percussive; Bauer could have fallen easily into a bass register; Rose might have chosen to play the melody lead like a voice or saxophone. But that, presumably, would have been going too easy on the unsuspecting listener.

Instead they frenetically circle and burrow, creating a new sonic situation every few seconds, working, it seems, inches from the listener's ears. They are working together, constantly picking up on suggestions from each other but never falling into formation. They create musical fragments only to ignore or destroy them. Futch is restless, relentless, occasionally hilarious and always commanding of attention. The bold will use headphones.(from TheSquid'sEar)

2006 FUTCH (Jazwerkstatt) rapidshare/mediafire

Artifact iTi - Artifact: iTi Live in St Johann

Ken Vandermark - reeds
Johannes Bauer - trombone
Thomas Lehn - analogue synthesizer
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums

2010 ARTIFACT: ITI LIVE IN ST JOHANN