Regen Orchester XII

Town Down

Label: Red Note Country: The Netherlands

"Things are changing, there is no doubt about it. Whereas around the turn of the millennium the experimental improvisers focused on dynamic reduction now they are rediscovering the groove. The music of Franz Hautzinger strongly reflects this development.

Using unorthodox embouchure techniques and unique ways of modulating the streams of air, plus amplifying the slightest puff by intense micing inside the horn, the austrian-born trumpet player began coaxing flightily breathed low sounds out of his instrument in the 1990s. The unusual rock jazz sounds he played with his Regenorchester XI at the Saalfelden Jazzfestival 2003 therefore came as a surprise.

With the twelfth incarnation of his long-time Regenorchester project (which owes its name "rain orchestra" to the soggy London weather at the first concert) Hautzinger intensified this tendency even more. At the 2006 NEWJazz Meeting, Southwest German Radio's (SWR) annual festival in Baden-Baden, the band featured Otomo Yoshihide and Christian Fennesz, two luminaries of electronic music and guitarists who can not only create an atmosphere of suspense in silence but also relate to noise and rock idioms. Also part of the project were Luc Ex, former member of the anarcho-jazz punk band The Ex, on electric bass, and Tony Buck, drummer with the Australian ensemble The Necks, who likewise guarantee electrifying pulses.

The rediscovery of the wild fusion years of course ensues from a metalevel: Hautzinger and his Regenorchester XII play a kind of "jazz about jazz", incorporating quite naturally accomplishments of experimental improvisation or drone and noise experiences into the rock jazz sound. In the piece "Rain Day", for instance, even mighty walls of sound are built up before the listeners due to fourfold overdubbing. In "Delis" the sounds are distorted and transformed via retuning of the instruments, with Hautzinger delving into microtones, as he also does in "Sand". Much as it's close to Miles Davis: it's a "new electric jazz" created by Regenorchester XII, whose exciting sounds wash away any associations with the patter of London's continuous rain."-Red Note Records