The Squid's Ear Magazine


Brotzmann, Peter / Heather Leigh: Sex Tape (Trost Records)

The second album between European Free Jazz legend Peter Brotzmann and US-born, Scottish residing pedal steel guitarist Heather Leigh, performing live at Music Unlimited Festival, in Wels, Austria in 2016 for a biting yet intimate set between the two, both players on fire as they weave long sinuous lines in an emotional and often brutal orgy of sound.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Peter Brotzmann-tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, Tarogato, clarinet

Heather Leigh-pedal steel guitar


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UPC: 9120036682504

Label: Trost Records
Catalog ID: TROST 163CD
Squidco Product Code: 24037

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2017
Country: Austria
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Live at Music Unlimited Festival, in Wels, Austria, on November 13th, 2016, by Alois Hummer.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"From the first second of this performance, on the last and third night of the Unlimited Music festival in Wels, Austria, on November, 13th, 2016, it was clear that the duo of Brötzmann and Leigh stages some kind of a love story. The energy and the dynamics hinted that something primal, sensual connects these unique personalities. This insight was reaffirmed few months later when the explicit artwork for this album, prepared by Brötzmann, surfaced. This artwork echoes and twists a formative biblical myth, with the make-no-nonsense title that shouts it out even louder.

Well, Brötzmann was never shy how his music and art at all radiates his sexuality. Go and listen to his sextet playing Nipples (originally released on 1969, re-released by Trost sister-label Cien Fuegos, 2015) or Balls (originally released by FMP on 1970, re-released by Cien Fuegos on 2011), or check the poster he did for the Unlimited Festival that he curated in 2011 (captured on the 5-discs box Long Story Short, Trost, 2013).

Sex Tape is only the sophomore release of Brötzmann and Leigh, recorded in the middle of a European tour, following Ears Are Filled With Wonder (Not Two/Trost, 2016). However, this duo had already established itself as one of the main outfits of Brötzmann. Brötzmann and Leigh recorded recently another studio album that is about to be released later this year.

The live recording sounds now as a restless ritual of heavy - sonic - petting. Brötzmann begins with a typical muscular roar but Leigh is far from impressed by his manly call. Her sharp metallic lines force him to change his tactics, seducing him to play in her own game, a slow and noisy psychedelic drone. For a while, he enjoys this mischief. Still, the old lion has few more tricks up his sleeve and he knows how to swing Leigh to some fiery, cathartic climaxes. She jumps head-on, but soon she surprises him with soft, repetitive patterns of courting sounds, answered immediately with surprising emotional melodies by Brötzmann, who plays now on the tarogato. The peaceful, intimate dynamics do not last long before Brötzmann and Leigh resume another explosive confrontation, pushing each other to extreme, ecstatic terrains, eventually drowning in Leigh's feedback-laden, metallic storm. Again, after exhausting themselves, both opt for more introspective and emotionally touching interplay that offers Brötzmann most vulnerable and gentle side. Finally, this emotional pendulum concludes when these tough-minded improvisers making peace, in their own proud and most intense terms, by no means surrender to each other but totally fascinated by this mysterious sex thing."- Eyal Hareuveni, The Free Jazz Collective


Get additional information at Free Jazz Blog

Artist Biographies

"Born Remscheid, Germany on 6 March 1941; soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophones, a-clarinet, e-flat clarinet; bass clarinet, tarogato.

Peter Brötzmann's early interest was in painting and he attended the art academy in Wuppertal. Being very dissatisfied with the gallery/exhibition situation in art he found greater satisfaction playing with semi-professional musicians, though continued to paint (as well as retaining a level of control over his own records, particularly in record sleeve/CD booklet design). In late 2005 he had a major retrospective exhibition jointly with Han Bennink - two separate buildings separated by an inter-connecting glass corridor - in Brötzmann's home town of Remscheid.

Self-taught on clarinets, he soon moved to saxophones and began playing swing/bebop, before meeting Peter Kowald. During 1962/63 Brötzmann, Kowald and various drummers played regularly - Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc. - while experiencing freedoms from a different perspective via Stockhausen, Nam June Paik, David Tudor and John Cage. In the mid 1960s, he played with American musicians such as Don Cherry and Steve Lacy and, following a sojourn in Paris with Don Cherry, returned to Germany for his unorthodox approach to be accepted by local musicians like Alex von Schlippenbach and Manfred Schoof.

The trio of Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald and Sven-Ake Johansson began playing in 1965/66 and it was a combination of this and the Schoof/Schlippenbach Quintet that gave rise to the first Globe Unity Orchestra. Following the self-production of his first two LPs, For Adolphe Sax and Machine gun for his private label, BRÖ, a recording for Manfred Eicher's 'Jazz by Post' (JAPO) [Nipples], and a number of concert recordings with different sized groups, Brötzmann worked with Jost Gebers and started the FMP label. He also began to work more regularly with Dutch musicians, forming a trio briefly with Willem Breuker and Han Bennink before the long-lasting group with Han Bennink and Fred Van Hove. As a trio, and augmented with other musicians who could stand the pace (e.g. Albert Mangelsdorff on, for example, The Berlin concert), this lasted until the mid-1970s though Brötzmann and Bennink continued to play and record as a duo, and in other combinations, after this time. A group with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo continued the trio format though was cut short by Miller's early death.

The thirty-plus years of playing and recording free jazz and improvised music have produced, even on just recorded evidence, a list of associates and one-off combinations that include just about all the major figures in this genre: Derek Bailey (including performances with Company (e.g. Incus 51), Cecil Taylor, Fred Hopkins, Rashied Ali, Evan Parker, Keiji Haino, Misha Mengelberg, Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Andrew Cyrille, Phil Minton, Alfred 23 Harth, Tony Oxley. Always characterised as an energy player - and the power-rock setting of Last Exit with Ronald Shannon Jackson, Sonny Sharock and Bill Laswell, or his duo performances with his son, Casper, did little to disperse this conviction - his sound is one of the most distinctive, life-affirming and joyous in all music. But the variety of Brötzmann's playing and projects is less recognised: his range of solo performances; his medium-to-large groups and, in spite of much ad hoc work, a stability brought about from a corpus of like- minded musicians: the group Ruf der Heimat; pianist Borah Bergman; percussionist Hamid Drake; and Die like a dog, his continuing tribute to Albert Ayler, with Drake, William Parker and Toshinori Kondo. Peter Brötzmann continues a heavy touring schedule which, since 1996 has seen annual visits to Japan and semi-annual visits to the thriving Chicago scene where he has played in various combinations from solo through duo (including one, in 1997, with Mats Gustafsson) to large groups such as the Chicago Octet/Tentet, described below. He has also released a number of CDs on the Chicago-based Okka Disk label, including the excellent trio with Hamid Drake and the Moroccan Mahmoud Gania, at times sounding like some distant muezzin calling the faithful to become lost in the rhythm and power of the music.

The "Chicago Tentet" was first organized by Brötzmann with the assistance of writer/presenter John Corbett in January 1997 as an idea for a one-time octet performance that included Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang (drums), Kent Kessler (bass) and Fred Lomberg-Holm (cello), Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams (reeds), and Jeb Bishop (trombone). The first meeting was extremely strong and warranted making the group an ongoing concern and in September of that same year the band was expanded to include Mats Gustafsson (reeds) and Joe McPhee (brass) as permanent members (with guest appearances by William Parker (bass), Toshinori Kondo (trumpet/electronics), and Roy Campbell (trumpet) during its tenure) - all in all a veritable who's who of the contemporary improvising scene's cutting edge. Though the Tentet is clearly led by Brötzmann and guided by his aesthetics, he has been committed to utilizing the compositions of other members in the ensemble since the beginning. This has allowed the band to explore an large range of structural and improvising tactics: from the conductions of Mats Gustafsson and Fred Lonberg-Holm, to the vamp pieces of Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake, to compositions using conventional notation by Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams, to Brötzmann's graphic scores - the group employs almost every contemporary approach to composing for an improvising unit. This diversity in compositional style, plus the variety in individualistic approaches to improvisation, allows the Tentet to play extremely multifaceted music. As the band moves from piece to piece, it explores intensities that range from spare introspection to all out walls of sound, and rhythms that are open or free from a steady pulse to those of a heavy hitting groove. It is clear that the difficult economics of running a large band hasn't prevented the group from continuing to work together since its first meeting. Through their effort they've been able to develop an ensemble sound and depth of communication hard to find in a band of any size or style currently playing on the contemporary music scene."

-EFI (European Free Improvisation Pages) (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mbrotzm.html)
3/25/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"The daughter of a coal miner, weaving a trail from West Virginia to Texas and now residing in Scotland, Heather Leigh furthers the vast unexplored reaches of pedal steel guitar. Her playing is as physical as it is phantom, combining spontaneous compositions with a feel for the full interaction of flesh with hallucinatory power sources. With a rare combination of sensitivity and strength, Leigh's steel mainlines sanctified slide guitar and deforms it using hypnotic tone-implosions, juggling walls of bleeding amp tone with choral vocal constructs and wrenching single note ascensions. In late 2015, Heather Leigh released her first proper studio album, 'I Abused Animal' on Stephen O'Malley & Peter Rehberg's Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego labels to widespread acclaim. Renowned as a fearless free improviser, 'I Abused Animal' is a breakthrough work showcasing Heather Leigh's songwriting prowess, foregrounding her stunning voice and her innovations for the pedal steel guitar. Warmly recorded in a secret location in the English countryside, the album transmutes the power of her captivating live performances to a studio setting, capturing her tactile playing in full clarity while making devastating use of volume and space. Heather Leigh explores themes of abuse, sexual instinct, vulnerability, memory, shadow, fantasy, cruelty and projection across the album's psychedelic hymnals. At times the intimacy of the recordings makes you feel like she's singing directly into your ear, playing just for you."

-Heather Leigh Website (http://wishimage.com/bio)
3/25/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Sex Tape 47:47

Related Categories of Interest:

May 2017
Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
European Improvisation and Experimental Forms
Duo Recordings
Peter Brotzmann

Search for other titles on the label:
Trost Records.


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