Browse by Label: GROB (GERMANY)

Artist:	BEASTIESHOPBEACH
Title:
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	GROB 101CD

"Olaf Rupp and Götz Rogge, both from Berlin, play live electronic music. They have hidden beats meet droning melodies, while destroyed guitar chords meet acoustic entropy and wild activism. Everything is constructed within and on top of everything else. Overlapping is not considered by them to be provocation however, but the last means of perceiving the world. Beastieshopbeach improvise. Their technical means are modest -- a beaten wooden board in place of a drum machine- but their imagination has no limits. Götz Rogge works as a filmmaker, while Olaf Rupp is an established guitarist and electronic musician (solo guitar, plus collaborations with Wolfgang Fuchs, Harri Sjöström, Paul Lovens, Thomas Lehn, Butch Morris)."

Artist:	SUCHY, JOSEPH
Title:	Smile
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	GROB 103CD

"Announced in 1978: the debut album from the guitarist and producer Joseph Suchy, a guitar virtuoso who focused here on completely brute and highly dynamic sound eruptions, and whose subtlety appeared in sudden breaks and surprising empty spaces. With only a guitar and multi-tracking device, he constructs complex improvised music. The effect of such music is aimed directly at the body and perceived via the stomach. The music's physical presence takes one's breath away in the truest sense of the word. Smile does not consist solely of material from 1978. Over the last 20 years, Suchy has made many attempts at a solo project, and each time threw out completely formed designs. He worked on Smile for over a year. Suchy has played with, among others, FX Randomiz and Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars) in the group Four Square Logos, as well as in the freecore group Metall Assemblague. Along with Randomiz and Werner, he also produces for the label Gefriem."

Artist:	CHADLEHN
Title:	C Inside
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 205CD

"The virtuous string player Eugene Chadbourne and the ingenious synthesizer player Thomas Lehn met in the summer of 1999 to celebrate an impossible event: the confrontation of a banjo with an analogue EMS-synthesizer. Both know well, as if dreaming, how to move between material extension and its demolition in the best tradition of European improvised music and country songs, as only Chadbourne can recite them. As if they had never done anything else. It doesn't matter if they weave dense interactions and lump them into great noise or consciously go separate ways and seem to play without the other- their exchange is always direct, constantly the other knows the right answer. Spontaneous improvisation in full completion: C Inside actually documents the first meeting of these master musicians."

Artist:	STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND
Title:	Budapest
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 315CD

"Over two years after Steamboat Switzerland hit the (post-) improv and (post-) noise scene with their Live CD, only now do the long awaited follow up CDs appear. If the debut CD presented a patchwork of improvisation, own and foreign compositions and rock pieces, Budapest and ac/dB [Hayden] are compact, integral and equally imploring monolithic works. And yet the two CDs couldn't be more different. Budapest is the result of a purely improvised concert they gave in Danube metropolis in the Fall of 1999. The noise and prog rock roots have been compressed so much that there are no more clichés nor more citations, only tension that bursts asunder. The CD was mixed and co-produced by Stephan Wittwer, who contributed the intro, a little gem about the state of being chopped up. The grunge track that the band played following their improvisation, as an encore, is also a composition from Wittwer. The liner notes to this CD were written by Dietmar Dath."

Artist:	SCHOOL OF VELOCITY
Title:	Homework
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 317CD

"The School of Velocity was originally a product of London's closely meshed improv scene in which everyone had the chance to play with everyone at every possible opportunity. The multi-instrumentalist and guitarist Dave Tucker initiated the project in 1998. At this point in time, he had already written a little music history: at the end of the 70's, beginning of the 80's he was a member of the legendary (post-) punkband, The Fall, and since the beginning of the 90's he has been garnering more and more attention in London's improv scene. Today he works, among others, in a duo with John Butcher, in a quartet with Phil Moniton, Roger Turner and Pat Thomas, in projects with Louis Moloho or as a composer for the London Improvisers Orchestra. In this context, the School of Velocity was at first nothing more than another ad hoc group to which Tucker invited the drummer Steve Noble, the saxophonist Evan Parker and later, the bassist John Edwards. The penetrating power of this group as well as the willingness of the participants to allow differing music influences and to create an own music syntax from them lead, ultimately, to an extended studio session in the Spring of 2000. Its best parts are documented on Homework. The rock influences of Dave Tucker, the characteristic saxophone of Evan Parker, the muscular bass and the varied drums unite in the open improvisational structures, as typical for the British school. Evan Parker, perhaps the most significant and style forming saxophonist of the last thirty years, uses almost solely his tenor saxophone, which is also an index for how energetic this music is. And yet it never loses its transparency. Responsible for this is, on the one hand, the excellent production, done by the musicians themselves, and on the other, the sensitive, apparently radar guided acting by John Edwards and Steve Noble. In short, Homework is an authentic document of a promising, new group."

Artist:	MARCHETTI_VOICE CRACK_NOETINGER
Title:	Double_Wash
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 318CD

"In the last few years, the Swiss duo Andi Guhl and Norbert Möslang, a.k.a. Voice Crack, a.k.a. 'The Godfathers of Glitch' (Phil Durrant) have searched out cooperation with other artists: there have been recordings with Günter Müller, Jim O'Rourke, Eric M and Otomo Yoshihide. The cooperation with Lionel Marchetti and Jérome Noetinger is doubly different on Double_Wash. On the one hand, both Frenchmen work, musically, in a similar field; to a large degree, they also use found objects in their electro-acoustic improvisations. On the other hand, the recordings made in the Winter of 1998 are not a pure documentation -- they were re-mixed in the Summer by Marchetti above all, but also by Möslang. What's being released is a CD that is committed to improvisation as well as to electro-acoustic music. This can naturally be traced back to the participation of the French. Marchetti and Noetinger see themselves in the tradition of the now classic musique concréte, and as owner of the label and distribution Metamkine, Noetinger has released, for example, compositions from Jim O'Rourke or Luc Ferrari, and Marchetti has cooperated, as a composer, with Ralf Wehowsky, among others. Both see musique concréte, however, not as sacred territory to be preserved at all costs -- they have developed an open, punk-like attitude to this sound aesthetic; they infiltrate the music with improvisation and a D.I.Y. attitude. Little need be said about Voice Crack and their cracked everyday electronics. For over 25 years, they have been developing, beginning in Free Jazz, then becoming a harsh noise group par excellence in the 80's and extending our listening habits with breath taking sound layers: just as brute as subtle and always resourceful. Double_Wash brings this dialectic of formal variety and monochromatism, of willingness to exchange and of unmistakable handwriting to its conclusion."

Artist:	DAFELDECKER/BORIS D. HEGENBART, WERNER
Title:	Eis 9
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 319CD

"Two years ago, the German pop music magazine Spex (a bit like Option in German) called the Viennese Werner Dafeldecker 'a Jim O'Rourke from the Alps.' The comparison strikes one as quite distorted but is based on a few things in common. Both represent an extended idea of improvisation that does not rest upon parameters like 'interaction,' 'dynamics,' or 'energy,' but rather that appears airy, looser, more comprehensive: (sound in) space becomes more important, the occasion plays a bigger (more existential) role in the foreground. Indeed this occasion is not only another situation to improvise together, but rather an expression of a state that one should adjust his/her sensors completely anew. The influence of new music (the New York School and beyond) never seems apparent, but as it were, subcutaneously. Just like the improvisations of O'Rourke in the 90's, Dafeldecker's music is characterized by the logical but constantly surprising intervention that breaks the peaceful current of the music and continues it at the same time. Eis-9 [Ice Cream 9] is a summer record, no hermetic structures, no gloomy sounds, no wallowing in stagnation and hardening (= cold). Ice cream melts. Dafeldecker demonstrates here once more how he dissociates his strict instrumentalism (dealing with the instrument as essential sound material) from his original instrument, the contra bass, and transfers it to others: guitar, percussion, found objects, PowerBook. Just as gropingly as definite. Eis-9 is above all the product of an intensive cooperation with the Berlin/Viennese electronic musician Boris D. Hegenbart. Coming out of nowhere, he published the CD Hikuito in 1998, music developed in hand made paper that came to fragile melodies once peeling away its (apparent) influences (Carl Stone, Oval). The groping and the definite flowed into the Eis-9 cooperation. Improvised music as symbiosis, as something that does not only come into being in the instant, but rather that grows. Eis-9 also means 'ice cream' is not an unambiguous fixed construction, but one that dissolves in various forms, structures, and, well, states."

Artist:	RUPP, OLAF
Title:	Scree
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 433CD

"Scree is a record that reveals a musician at the height of his creativity. Everything that follows will sound different, can only sound different. Of course, Scree is the result of radical improvisation (and also in this sense everything later sounds different, since it is a matter of real-time compositions that are bound up with the moment of performing and are per se not repeatable). Seldom has one heard guitar improvisation that is so thoroughly worked through, so fast, so virtuous and dense and so well thought-out -- and if it's a matter of this -- so withdrawn. Seldom has one heard improvised music that is so well-rounded and thereby so radically bound to the instant in which it is played. Olaf Rupp has played with Paul Lovens, Tony Buck, Joe Williamson, Uli Jenneßen, Paul Lovens, Johannes Bauer, Thomas Lehn, Wolfgang Fuchs, Aki Takase, Butch Morris, Aleks Kolkowski, Harri Sjöström, Stephan Mathieu ... and for four years he has been intensively grappling with solo playing."

Artist:	WILLIAMSON, JOE
Title:	The Ungrateful Carjacker
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 536CD

"It has become quite commonplace that, since the solo albums from Peter Kowald, Barry Guy or William Parker, not only has the contrabass been emancipated, but also accepted as an equal instrument in improvisation, and recognized as a solo instrument. Nonetheless, solo bass recordings are considered unwieldy -- one is simply too accustomed to perceiving the bass as an accompanying instrument, responsible for the solid foundation of the groove. Living in Berlin, the young Canadian Joe Williamson is at the moment THE bassist of the European Improv and Free Jazz scene. He plays with Sven-Åke Johansson in Hudson Riv, and in the Candy-Trio. Joe Williamson is also an excellent soloist. The Ungrateful Carjacker is his solo debut. His entirely playful rich dark drones suddenly manifest themselves, as does a hidden groove, or a deep pulse that holds everything together. In the decisive moment, there are also suggestions of tradition."

Artist:	BLANK
Title:	Blank Meets Pettibon
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 538CD

"The Frankfurt Trio Blank encounters classic improvisation with the sure-footed and subversive gesture of contemporary anarchism. They work on small forms; out of songs, elements of pop music, noise and theatrics (in the true sense of the word) they cut out strange miniatures of free improvisation. Their music is direct, dynamic, expressive, without thereby perpetuating once again the dead history that is inherent in the adapted cliches. They not only get the form into their music, but they re-liquefy it; they do not understand the citation as citation, but as material. In the fall of 2001, they met the American art star Raymond Pettibon in Cologne's Philharmonic concert hall. They worked with the otherwise so introverted artist on a group performance. And of course, everything ended up in a wild improvisation in which Pettibon played the animator and inspirer. This CD is really a full quartet recording! Pettibon did the cover work, and in addition, his notes and text fragments are printed."

Artist:	BOSETTI/ANNETTE KREBS, ALESSANDRO
Title:
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 540CD

"Krebs and Bosetti are among some of the most exciting musicians from Berlin, both have long been well-known in international circles. Annette Krebs, who plays an electro-acoustically prepared classical guitar, belongs on an equal basis with improvisers (and composers) such as Andrea Neumann, Taku Sugimoto, Toshimaru Nakemura or Axel Dörner. Stillness, minimalism, noise (but the later is not meant in the sense of a racket, but as a kind of unmediated sound), rustling, consciousness of structure and spontaneity, all of these experience a new value through these musicians -- above all through Annette Krebs' way of playing the guitar. The saxophone player Alessandro Bosetti has also devoted himself to a radical noise-like way of playing, and yet one always senses how strongly he has been influenced by Steve Lacy and modern jazz of the 60s and 70s. In their duets, they do not, however, simply extend their work on noise. The music is formed by a pronounced sense of structure. They work on short units, with many pauses and stillness -- but never for the sake of a pause (or stillness). Each pause has it exactly defined place in the dynamics of the music. Bosetti and Krebs savor monochrome tonal colors, research the gray behind the gray -- and nonetheless this music is not monumental, not simply noise, not a hermetic block. It is a very exact, reflected music that never becomes overbearing or stiff. It has something casual, in the best sense of the word, it's non-ambitious."

Artist:	DAFELDECKER/KLAUS LANG, WERNER
Title:	Lichtgeschwindigkeit
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 541CD

"When talking about the music of the Graz-based composer and organ player Klaus Lang and the Viennese bassist and multi-instrumentalist Werner Dafeldecker, one could briefly say that there is a form of velocity so fast one no longer perceives it as such, but rather as stagnation. The speed of light is such a case. The music of Dafeldecker and Lang also appears to be stagnant. It doesn't get going anywhere. A powerful, droning organ chord, a bowed bass and both are perceived as if they were chiseled for eternity. Music that sounds irrevocable, great and sublime, fascinating and off-putting. The tonal spectrum of this music, which one could compare to the harsh improvisations of the early AMM, or to several compositions of Kevin Drumms or to recordings from the radical minimalist school of Tony Conrad, cannot be summarized by this description. The recordings were made in a church in the southeast province of Austria on a snowed-in winter night."

Artist:	JOHANSSON/RÜDIGER CARL/JOE WILLIAMSON, SVEN-ÅKE
Title:	Hudson Riv (Autumn In New York)
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 542CD

"This CD is a sensation. We are not exaggerating and do not want to make any false pretenses. But one has to listen to it in order to understand what's really happening here. In November 2001 Carl and Johansson met in Johansson's Berlin studio, grabbed the bassist Joe Williamson and played a homage to New York. They interpreted a total of 13 standards, true to the original and full of respect. Recorded in two takes. For the first time we hear Carl play only piano on record, and Johansson sing only standards. And always when Sven hits his snare (and only his snare) with the brushes, there is in the middle of autumn an anticipation of the next spring. The cover art work is from Sven-Åke Johansson, David Grubbs wrote the liner notes: a reflection upon forbidden songs in the New York Autumn of 2001."

Artist:	BSC, THE
Title:	Good
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 543CD

"In Vienna, Berlin and Tokyo musicians are working on stillness, reduction, non-expressivity and micro-differentiation. In Cologne, London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Warsaw, this music is performed and written about. But up to now the most exciting of this scene has been happening outside these large cities. For example, in Boston. That this city possesses a young and rather large improv scene including labels and venues is well known. There are even a few 'superstars' like the saxophonist Bhob Rainey and the trumpeter Greg Kelley, two musicians who have easily liberated themselves from established improvisation patterns. What has been missing till now is a recording that clearly exemplifies the Sound of Boston. Such a thing can hardly be forced, it always seems to happen casually, e.g. when one listens to a concert recording again and again and then suddenly discovers how definitive it is. Such a stroke of luck has arrived with The BSC -- Good. The BSC is a chamber orchestra from Boston led by Bhob Rainey. Joining him are Greg Kelley (of course), James Coleman (theremin), Howard Stelzer (tapes), Liz Tonne (voice), Vic Rawlings (cello, electronics), Mike Bullock (bass), and Chris Cooper (prepared guitar), with guests Axel Dörner (trumpet) and Andrea Neumann (inside piano). Good is a 37-minute, improvisation process recorded live, which creatively draws on the resources from the reduced parameters of this new improvised music. Despite all the stillness, the music is also surprisingly dense and tightly woven together. The music captivates via a noisiness radical maintained throughout the whole piece, and in spite of this (or because of it?), it is lyrical and surreal. The melody of metallic shimmering tonal colors can be heard from the very beginning."

Artist:	HAUTZINGER/MANSON LIU WINTER, FRANZ
Title:	Brospa
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 544CD

"GROB continues the successful cooperation with the Viennese trumpeter and composer Franz Hautzinger. On Brospa, Hautzinger meets the pianist Manon Liu Winter, known from New Music circles. For a while, both have been playing in a duo and have developed their own improvised language. It appears as if Hautzinger is really in his own territory here. Brospa offers no dry, mostly still and radically reduced sound. The murmuring, growling and simmering sounds he elicits from his trumpet and leads into subsonic depths finds a perfect mirror in the varied, equally dense and sophisticated inside playing of Winter. It appears as if the shimmering, cluster-like sounds of both mirror themselves in each other and raise the other to a higher power. Even when the instruments are recognizable as individual voices, one hears 'in a higher sense' a synthesis: the music is monochromatic and isn't as well; it is static and enormously dramatic. It is music that reminds one of the great Romanian sound sculptor Iancu Dumitrescu or on Horatio Radulsecu, but it is 'of course!?' improvised, originating in simply one session, originating out of a reflected-spontaneous use of completely simple means."

Artist:	WERTMÜLLER, MICHAEL
Title:	Die Zeit. Eine Gebrauchsanweisung
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 545CD

Performed by: Kammermusikensemble (Mark Trayle, computer; Stephan Wittwer, guitar) & European String Quartet (with Alex Buess, live electronics). "The compositions of Michael Wertmüller, as diverse as they may be, can all be seen as contributing to solving the problem, how does density originate? Density -- mediated as energy, brute force, loudness, tempo, etc -- results here from extremely gracefully built structures that are folded into each other, linked, and associated such that they result in a great whole. But the graceful build is not exhausted in the compositions, but only elevated. It is audible all along as a trace, as a necessity (as reason, cause). Wertmüller plays out this dialectic of fragility in these compositions to its completion. This is meant literally: his music is derived from a sheer inexhaustible richness, but despite all its aggression, it also has an audibly luxurious character."

Artist:	MULLER/MOSLANG
Title:	Boom_Box
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 649CD

Günter Müller: selected percussion, MD's, iPOD, electronics. Norbert Möslang: cracked everyday-electronics. Recorded 21.10.2001 at the Loft, Köln. "Boom Box is one of the first recordings of Norbert Möslang after the break up of Voice Crack, his legendary Duo with Andi Gühl which lasted a good 30 years. On Boom-Box, Möslang also plays his cracked everyday-electronics, but their tonal surroundings is a different one. It is a wide, ethereal tonal ambience, the structures are lucid, the music is transparent. Again and again there are foregrounds and backgrounds, individual tonal configurations stand out clearly and distinctly, specific sounds are repeated, thus creating a scaffold through which other sounds are elegantly woven."

Artist:	BLANK
Title:	Post
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 653CD

"Improvisation not a fetish, but rather as material, as an object of process, as a means to save past gestures, those hardly left in memory -- this is the musical procedure of the Frankfurt trio Blank. Blank consists of Oliver Augst (voice, no-input mixing board, harmonica, etc.), Christoph Korn (guitar, live electronics, melodica, and voice from time to time) and Rüdiger Carl (claviola, a small keyboard with rhythm functions, a little accordion, no clarinet this time around, but with voice, a world premier!). The Frankfurt-based group has been working together for seven years. Post is an exemplary expression of working antithesis. The music seems static and diverting at the same time; there are virtually no references and concessions on the zeitgeist, and yet Post is saturated with historical gestures -- punk, techno, the proletariat song tradition, trace elements of blues and new wave."

Artist:	KONK PACK
Title:	Off Leash
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 654CD

"Off Leash is the third release of the delicate high-energy trio Konk Pack -- founded in 1998 and made up of Thomas Lehn on EMS-synthesizer, Roger Turner on drums and Tim Hodgkinson on la-top steel guitar and clarinet. Off Leash bears up to the musicians' critical ears. For the first time they are so convinced of their own concert that they found it valuable to release it in its entirety on a CD. Off Leash offers the opportunity of following an entire Konk Pack improvisation in real time, without any post production dramaturgy and cosmetics. The extremely powerful passages, their legendary free punk, is in a perfectly balanced proportion to the peaceful, sometimes fragile, passages that nearly crumble apart. The music is both: it is consistent, like of a cast, like from a group that had played far more than 100 concerts (which is seldom in the world of improvised music); the music, however, is also eruptive, often surprising, fragmentary and heterogeneous. The music from Konk Pack is the contradiction made productive: finely engraved tonal work and hard free punk are not placed non-reconcilably next to each other; in fact, they determine each other."

Artist:	COLEMAN/FRANZ HAUTZINGER/SACHIKO M/OTOMO YOSHIHIDE, GENE
Title:	Concert in St. Louis
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 656CD

"In the last four or five years there has been a clear set trend towards stillness in improvised music. The classical parameters -- the forming of energy states, the spontaneous, dense communication -- are not relevant to this music, but rather the empty spaces, the disparate, non-dynamic, the recessed. Stillness. So these are the best prerequisites not to reproduce the 'cliché of stillness,' but rather to initiate a restful as well as very open and highly flexible improvising process. Stillness is not assumed here, is not a result and an purpose worth aspiring for, but rather it is a means to form. The strong rustling improvisation does not deplete itself, but rather brings forth new constellation of their playing together (also next to each other). It is slow, peaceful, very relaxed flowing music. But whoever listens closely will hear the tension and the exertion, the wrestling to create expression."

Artist:	ARBEIT
Title:	Marx
Label:	GROB (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	GROB 657CD

"'Arbeit' [in German, 'work'], the Frankfurt group of Marcel Daemgen, Oliver Augst and Christoph Korn (active in Blank last year, see GROB 538 and GROB 653) asked themselves this question in the scope of a project made possible by German Radio. What has remained unredeemed of the questioning of the revolutionary workers? Movement and its aesthetic intervention? What has not worn down in the course of time via the demoralizing strategy and party development discussions? What stands for a utopian-critical content, which points beyond historical material, that lifts [aufhebt] it in all three meanings of the word [annul, lift and compensate]? Daemgen, Augst, Korn and their guests do not deal with the material squeamishly, but rather bet on the necessary radicalism. Their music is brutish, noisy, nerve-racking and shrill, or the exact opposite of this: nearly inaudibly quiet. 'The International' sounds like a pop hymn, 'Off, off to fight' shudders with fear via an apocalyptic foundational tone, Franz Fanon is cited and Tony Cliff, a communist dissident. It is a matter of the construction, albeit in vain, of a better Germany, of the German Democratic Republic and of the (hidden) self doubt in all the pathos of construction. The band uses its musical means freely and sovereignly. They know the improvisations, the hard rock, the new music and the Frankfurt techno of the larger discos. But never does this freedom fall into any old way. Marx is hard, but still joyful work (sic!) on the material."

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