Franz Hautzinger formed the orchestra in 1995 as an ensemble for experimental music, developing into an advanced improvising band that incorporates a shifting and diverse set of styles, heard here at Klangspuren Festival in 2019 with Hautzinger on trumpet, Christian Fennesz on guitar & laptop, Otomo Yoshihide on guitar & turntables, Luc Ex on bass, and Tony Buck on drums.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2020 Country: Austria Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded live at the Klangspuren Festival, in Schwaz, Austria, on September 19th, 2019, by Andreas Fruendedschuss.
"Hautzinger founded the Regenorchester (Rain Orchestra in English) project in London in 1995 as an experimental. Cross-genre ensemble. This project morphed throughout the years into a lab of free-improvised music and hosted in its evolving incarnations close friends from the Viennese as guitarist Burkhard Stangl and Martin Siewert (who mixed and mastered this recording), Australian guitarist and sound artist Oren Ambarchi, American guitarist Ava Mendoza, and British drummer Steve Noble. The twelfth incarnation of this project features an all-star ensemble - Hautzinger on quarter-tone trumpet, fellow Austrian guitarist and sound artist Christian Fennesz, Dutch player of acoustic bass guitar Luc Ex (aka Luc Klassen, formerly of The Ex) and Australian drummer Tony Buck (of The Necks fame) and Japanese guitarist and turntables player Otomo Yoshihide, all took parts in previous incarnations of the project. Relics was recorded live at the Klangspuren Festival, Schwaz, Austria in September 2019, and reflects faithfully the inclusive vision of this ensemble.
Relics incorporates organically elements of art-rock, noise, and drone into its intense and wild free-improvisations. Hautzinger's fast, staccato-like phrasings are at the center of the opening, title-piece and soar above the distorted storm of Fennesz and Yoshihide guitar and the percolating pulse of Ex and Buck. Buck builds a massive pulse on the following, the raging and chaotic"Arbre", with only Hautzinger attempting to inject a coherent narrative into this tensed piece. Hautzinger's whispering quiet breaths set the tone to the enigmatic, nuanced drone of "Icon". The following "Fanfare" intensifies slowly the subtle, sound-oriented interplay of "Icon" and creates a dense palette of thorny, nervous sounds, anticipating an apocalyptic climax, but Hautzinger opts for a peaceful conclusion. "Dogman" delivers the promised, cathartic climax with a magnificent, cosmic meltdown of Haitzinger extended breathing techniques, Fennesz and Yoshihide's tortured guitar lines, and Ex and Buck wild pulse. This performance ends with the haunting, cinematic drone of "Taimn", with some lyrical overtones of Hautzinger's trumpet and Buck's percussive work, soon to be veiled a dense wall of noisy sounds of the Regenorchester XII."-Eyal Hareuveni, The Free Jazz Collective