Jazz plus electronics from Swiss label. When faced with bass frequencies and long tones from the lower registers in music, I can’t help but reach for the “brooding” word, but I feel I use that expression too often in my writing. There must be a better way of putting it. I wish someone would conduct a study to show a proven scientific relations between the lowest notes on the organ and the bad moods of a fellow human being, or perhaps the exact opposite. After all, surely not everyone leaves a Bach concerto feeling down in the dumps.
The ad-hoc grouping today features not one but three bass clarinets – the massed force of which ought to be enough to sweep every littered pavement between Lausanne and Lucerne, which is where this was recorded. Although it’s credited to ErbtMäderAmBerg?, the threesome also answer to the name of the “Lucerne Bass Clarinet Trio”, and have booked hotel rooms under that cognomen, happy to share a single bed and ensuite shower. The extra magic ingredient is Thomas Lehn, who to me counts as “European Royalty” and one of the Crowned Heads of the Old Country when it comes to the analogue synthesizer. I mean he has managed to create his own principality, a private domain…and citizens swarm to it, eager to exchange currency and sign over their property. Whether it’s the zone of wild unfettered noise for Mego, or inserting his bleats into a free improvisation conversation, Lehn is the unchallenged Emperor of adventurous music and incredible ideas, realised on a grand scale.
Well, I suppose today’s record in echoes’ shadow (VETO RECORDS veto-exchange 022) does belong under the free improvisation tentacle of the Octopus of Modernism, but that’s because it’s label boss Christoph Erb doing the press notes and claiming that “collective action [is] the essence of the resulting sound fields” when these three woodwind ogres emerge from their cellar. The other two are Niklaus Mäder and Elio Amberg; I never heard Niklaus Mäder before but it seems he was once a member of Franky Silence and Ghost Orchestra, while Elio Amberg has appeared on Creative Sources and Wide Ear Records in a collaborative kettle. The record – it’s on vinyl and the great A side piece is a single 21:09 of productive advancement for science and medicine – is also described here as a “tightly-woven…conversation”, indicating that someone in the group would rather be at home knitting a rug. To my mind it is the German Lehn, with his academic background in Cologne and his sound-engineer electro-acoustic skills, that cements the important links back to Stockhausen and keeps these crazy free-jazzers in the muffin they richly deserve.
Getting back to the “brooding” thing, another and better word might be “reflecting” or any situation where other modes of expression are denied, so focussed are we on the matter at hand. Also there are not as many bass frequencies as I might have led you to believe. Also the sax players get the upper hand on side two and there’s much woodwind noodling there for me, too much male hen clucking form the bells. Even so, that sober and stern A side will see me through until next December. As the world knows, I am a dedicated fan of free jazz sax with modern-classical inflected electronics, starting with records by Braxton and Teitelbaum and carrying on through to Evan Parker and Lawrence Casserley. Why not? Horrible orange cover on this thing. It’s enough to put me off eating sweets. (6th May 2025)