Udo Schindler, free player of the soprano saxophone and bass clarinet in Wörthsee (Upper Bavaria) - joined here by Munich cellist Margarita Holzbauer and the Munich incomer, guitarist Harald Lillmeyer, both of them crossover daredevils firm in the depths of newest and still nameless music - doesn't let himself be stopped by anyone when his city lights have turned red: ROT (cs151).

The three met through playing in the Munich Instant Orchestra. Lillmeyer is the best-known among them having interpreted Scelsi or Riehm, guested with Ensemble Recherche and played with the electric-guitar-quintet Go Guitars. As far as extended techniques are concerned his partners are in no way behind him, which makes this suite of 15 improvisations scratch the guardrails of tonality with a bruitist and microtonal gusto which mellows the distinctions between acoustic and electric sounds generated by Lillmeyer, and even blurs those of the instrumental voices.

Whatever the fingers might tickle or the mouth may bubble, what lips may breathe, what the cello may bow or the plectrum scratch, can only be found out during concentrated listening. Yet right at the next moment, at the next breath, contrasts bubble up only to get right back into the river of sound, which the three impassioned wrong-way drivers always take against the current. Once a cello sounds solidly full-bodied it begins to fray at its fringes, once the music sounds sustained and soft the electronics scream its poison in or corrode a yawning hole inside the boom minimalist soundscape, having macro and micro voltages alternately hum along, sizzle or fly sparks. Into jagged, scabby or laboriously smoothed-down sounds the estranged guitar enflames stinging or indefinably rustling sounds, which turn out to be the sigh of the cello, soon as the guitar surprisingly begins.

Much is deceptive east of the ROT and you're listening unauthorized so to say and at your own risk."-Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy

This album has been reviewed on our magazine:


The Squid's Ear!