A Grain of Sound Begets a Symphony
Polwechsel, Niescier-Reid-Harris, Dan Peter Sundland's Home Stretch, Oùat
Three Decades of Polwechsel
I first heard Polwechsel back in 1997 when John Corbett brought them to Chicago for the inaugural edition of the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. I previewed the performance in the Chicago Reader: I was taken by the music, which didn’t sound like anything else I had heard at that point in my life. I remember the performance was marked by extraordinary stillness, but I hadn’t developed the proper listening skills at that age to fully appreciate what they were doing. I recently revisited the group’s debut album, which was released in 1995 on Random Acoustics—the label run by pianist Georg Gräwe that, in hindsight, helped document a remarkable moment in the development of improvised music. The music still sounds good if less radical than it did the time, a perceptive shift that the group is largely responsible for fostering. The ensemble was founded three decades ago in Vienna by cellist Michael Moser, bassist Werner Dafeldecker, guitarist Burkhand Stangl, and trombonist Radu Malfatti. Only Moser and Dafeldecker remain of those original members, with British saxophonist John Butcher stepping in for Malfatti in 1997, not long after I saw the group in Chicago. Stangl split in 2004, replaced by percussionists Burkhard Beins and Martin Brandlmayr. Butcher left in 2007, leaving the current quartet iteration in place ever since.
Polwechsel is in the midst of its 30th anniversary, marking the milestone not by looking back, but driving forward, releasing a stunning 4-LP set on the Ni Vu Ni Connu imprint called Embrace. The group played several concerts in Vienna last month, and they’ll do the same this weekend in Berlin, with two different programs at the Exploratorium. During the second half of the group’s existence it has increasingly worked with guests like pianist John Tilbury and keyboardist-composer Klaus Lang, and some of the new music carries on with that process, enlisting Magda Mayas and Andrea Neumann—both remarkable instrumentalists devoted to creating sounds from prepared and deconstructed piano, respectively—Lang, fellow composer Peter Ablinger, and former member Butcher. The new music is absorbing as ever, and if the group’s focus on creating compositional structures for improvisation—two practices that are inseparable if not silly to parse for Polwechsel—is no longer novel, its commitment to experimentation still creates dynamic new possibilities and curiosity.
Embrace contains some invaluable writing about the group. Austrian cultural journalist Reinhard Kager draws a detailed portrait of the group’s history and aesthetic shifts, Canadian music critic Stuart Broomer provides trenchant analysis of the pieces contained in the box set, and German bassist and musicologist/journalist Nina Polaschegg puts Polwechsel’s music and its patient development in historical context. Reading those texts led me to realize that so much of the music I am drawn to these days might not have been possible without Polwechsel. Obviously, the group didn’t exist in a vacuum and there were simultaneous, often connected developments in experimental music happening in Vienna, Berlin, Tokyo, and New York that fostered a new way of listening and making music that feels more prescient than ever, whether the harmonic riches within music embracing just intonation or work build on sustained sound in general. And clearly there were antecedents devoted to similar ideas, executed much differently. In the mid-to-late 1990s I appreciated the idea of sound qua sound, but it took me much longer to really get it. I think of Naldjorlak, the Éliane Radigue piece created with cellist Charles Curtis, where the focal point is the wolf tone, a precise part of the sonic spectrum musicians are taught to avoid and I had been taught (or socially programmed) to ignore as some kind error or after effect. That’s a very specific example, I realize, but it illustrates a turning point in my own comprehension and gratitude for the boundless rewards of sound itself as a primary compositional focus. The music Polwechsel has made over the years has its own distinctive context, but its dogged focus and determination to core principles have clearly touched others who’ve subsequently influenced many more musicians, an impact that seems to radiate more broadly with the passing of time.
Polwechsel were among the artists for whom annoying terms reductionism or lowercase sound were created, and it also took me years to grasp that the reduction was simply a tactic to pare the materials down to their essence, to create the most transparent conditions for experiencing sound. The members of the group have also used individual compositions as literal experiments: what can happen when a particular set of conditions are laid out for improvisation or the elastic arrangement of sounds. All of the music the ensemble members composed for this new release is pinned to one specific inquiry or another. Dafeldecker explains his piece Jupiter Storm, one of two works where the quartet is joined by Butcher and Mayas, in the liner notes:
I composed the piece using a computer, as I usually do these days, then arranged
pre-recorded material (gongs, piano, complex modular oscillators) which was then
spatialized and used for playback. The players then familiarised themselves with
the material in individual rehearsals and, working with stopwatches, entered their
material-solutions into the prefabricated, time-structured score. The cello and
double bass parts are purely improvised.
The flipside of the at that composition is Moser’s Partial Intersect, which deploys an inverse process of Gérard Grisey’s spectral analysis. More relevant, in a broader sense, is the way he composes for the ensemble: “When I compose for Polwechsel, I try not to follow certain practical patterns but to find sounds, ideas, electronic setups or rules that make us sound and play in a way we have never done before. This is the abstract starting point.” That assertion lays out the experimental ethos that’s largely defined the group’s history as much as its predilection for small, slow-moving gestures and charged interplay. Of course, none of those frameworks would add up to much if the musicians weren’t so adroit and versatile, fully committed to a shared vision.
Brandlmayr celebrates those qualities in his piece Chains and Grain, in which he drew upon hours of improvised sessions that the group had recorded, cutting them up in small passages and building a 40-minute composition from the material. The percussionist sought to create the piece using ideas formed within the group, not as an external composer’s voice, while also finding ways to repeat certain things without the structure becoming too fixed. Indeed, the work is a marvel of reusing and recasting ideas in new combinations and shifting responses that achieves his goal of allowing the identity of each musician to shine through while building an ensemble-oriented sound. You can hear the first part of the piece below.
The pieces by Moser and Brandlmayr mentioned above will both be performed on the first evening, along with Quarz by Beins; Butcher and Mayas will join in for the Moser piece. The second evening will feature Obsidian, another Beins piece, Dafeldecker’s Jupiter Storm, Ablinger’s Orakelstücke, and a work developed by the group with Andrea Neumann, Magnetron, all of which are part of the box set. Once again, Butcher and Mayas will join for the Dafeldecker piece, while Neumann will perform on Magnetron.
Radian: Martin Brandlmayr’s Other Side
In a related galaxy, Brandlmayr’s long-running trio Radian released a terrific new album this year, Distorted Rooms (Thrill Jockey). The music feels quite removed from what Polwechsel does, but there are certain overlapping ideas, none more salient than how Radian builds its music from the smallest, most random sonic gestures: the scratch of a pick against hyper-amplified guitar strings, or the buzz of an amplifier. Bassist John Norman, guitarist Martin Siewert, and Brandlmayr masterfully locate rhythms and melodies within such seemingly extraneous gestures and noises, an analog to the wolf tones of Naldjorlak applied to austere but dryly funky art-rock instrumentals.
Brandlmayr’s deliciously taut, off-kilter grooves have been enchanting me for over two decades, whether it’s trademark brush-on-snare approximation of a turntable scratch or his halting, displacement-loaded patterns. Radian’s music has always benefited from the details left out of the music, which the listener can’t help but provide mentally. As you can hear on the opening track “Cold Suns,” below, the trio stretch, resurface, and reconfigure the piece’s basic elements over the course of six fantastic minutes. There’s some kind of weird vocal chant, sweet synthesizer patterns, machine hums and buzzes, ambient noise, sizzling guitar distortion, and more draped over an armature that seems endlessly malleable. On “C at the Gates” a variety of terse patterns elucidated with brawny electric bass, thwacked string pizzicatos, synthesizer, vibraphone, and noise toggle across Brandlmayr’s halting rhythms, forging new blends and associations. I still don’t think anyone has elaborated on the noise-and-rhythm ideas of This Heat more effectively than Radian, and even if the basic sonic template hasn’t changed too much over the years, the trio has endlessly found ways to make it sound new, as they do all across Distorted Rooms—an album that seems sadly slept on in 2023.
The Power of Three with Angelika Niescier, Tomeka Reid and Savanah Harris/The Elaborate Post-Bop Constructions of Dan Peter Sundland’s Home Stretch
There seems to be no line between the high-energy personality and the fiery playing of saxophonist Angelika Niescier. Both contain tightly-coiled propulsion; a tangle of ideas that need to be communicated with passion and craftsmanship. Her alto playing is stronger than ever on Beyond Dragons (Intakt), a recent trio album made with cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Savannah Harris that both sparkles and wallops. Niescier’s energy seems contagious, as she brings out a visceral, bruising attack from her collaborators that I’ve never heard in quite the same way before. The trio first got together for a performance at Cologne Jazz Week in 2022, and they reconvened in Chicago in March of this year, when the recording was made following another performance. They perform in Berlin on Saturday, December 9 at House of Music, on a double bill with Dan Peter Sundland’s Home Stretch.
There’s no question that the musicians had already developed a strong rapport and cohesion by the time they hit the studio, because the opening piece “Hic Svnt Dracones”—Latin for “Here be Dragons,” a cartographic phrase for uncharted territory—shoots out of the gate like a racehorse. Reid takes on the bass role with nimble, fast-moving pizzicato, while Harris unleashes an equally furious groove that straddles off-kilter drive and explosive dynamism. They set up the saxophonist perfectly, who slides and slaloms across the groove with upper register lines that slash and seethe. Despite the aggression, Niescier’s tune is a marvel of steeplechase motion, with tightly interlocking alto saxophone and cello lines egging one another on and Harris holding it down even when she seems to be pummeling her snare into the ground like Rumpelstiltskin. The ease and precision of the mutual vitality can’t be faked—these three players couldn’t connect like this without some deeper sense of mutuality. Check it out below.
All three participants are excellent improvisers, but they come from different worlds and aesthetics, which onlymakes this communion more impressive. Niescier has long been a fiery presence on the Cologne scene, a player who routinely veers outside the lines of studied propriety that marks much of the town’s vaunted musical community, where great players seem to fall from trees. The education system produces remarkably versatile, skilled players, but many lose the wild sense of exploration that distinguishes Niescier. Reid has become one of the preeminent cellists in improvised music, a superb composer, bandleader, and ensemble-minded player known for close associations with folks like Nicole Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Mike Reed, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. She taps into a frenzied state I’ve never quite heard from her previously, reflecting Chicago’s deep free jazz culture without abandoning her innate melodic sensibility. She also incorporates judicious electronic flourishes to stretch, echo, and process her lines in real-time. Finally, there’s Harris, one of the most technically dazzling drummers on the New York scene—a musician who can approach the MPC-style of Damion Reid without ever letting her insane technique upstage what any particular group is trying to do. Last summer I saw her play in a group organized by bassist Petter Eldh and her ability to inject sudden runs, displacements, and wild accents within the flow of a simmering groove, all with a beatific expression on her face, blew me away. There was no question that she had loads of power in reserve, but it’s still something to hear her unleash in a collective setting like she does on Beyond Dragons.
Niescier is credited with writing all seven tunes—although Alexander Hawkins’ liner note essay mentions two collective improvisations—and most of them thread tricky unison passages atop swaggering rhythms. Harris reveals her compositional logic and melodic heart on the extended opening to “Risse.” The trio suggests a super jacked update of Henry Threadgill’s Air, with the trio engaging in constantly evolving three-way interplay. Reid uses her bow like a weapon, flailing it across the strings of her cello like a lash, albeit one with which she’s able to retain her usual precision and grace, even within the most harrowing passages, and as usual she comps and supports her bandmates with heightened sensitivity and selflessness, and when she and Niescier go head-to-head on "Morphoizm” their bond couldn’t be clearer. “Tannhauser Gate,” one of the collective improv pieces, opens with a gutsy textural exploration; Niescier blows unpitched columns of trilled air, Reid investigates fluttering harmonics, and Harris generates frictive hydroplaning metallic tones from a single cymbal, cumulatively conjuring an abstract sound world that feels deliciously tactile. Considering the range of sound and approaches the trio was able to summon in the studio, I can’t wait to see what they’ll do in front of an actual audience.
Norwegian bassist Dan Peter Sundland shares the bill with his agile quartet Home Stretch, which has just released its second album Before the Fall (Aut). His playing doesn’t sound anything like Steve Swallow, but they both manage to make the electric bass sound pleasing within an acoustic jazz context. His tricky tunes seem effortless in the hands of his Berlin bandmates—saxophonist Philipp Gropper, pianist Antonis Anissegos (who does add some electronic treatments on his instrument), and drummer Steve Heather. In many ways the band conveys a kind of state-of-the-art Berlin jazz sound, with compositions that seamlessly enfold ideas from contemporary music, including some 12-tone elements, within a tightly arranged matrix of contrapuntal lines and cross-cutting rhythms. While there is plenty of improvisation woven into these compact marvels, it rarely comes in extended solo-like strands. Even when it does, as with the Anissegos solo on “Squared Circle,” it’s so inextricably woven into the architecture of the composition that it doesn’t feel like an isolated showcase.
On the piece like “Broken Circle,” a jigsaw puzzle-like construction harnesses nimble unison lines voiced by Gropper and Anissegos—sounding like vintage bebop refracted through a prism—while the rhythm section metes out a tangled polyrhythmic groove. It’s mathematical in its complexity and movement, so it’s a credit to the band that they make it feel so natural. Within those written parts, though, there’s plenty of spontaneity, with each musician altering patterns to push and pull one another’s lines, forcing the quartet to perpetually be on their toes. Sometimes I wish the quartet would let a bit more space into the music, which is dense and detail-packed, but that’s a quibble, especially when the performances are so locked-in and subtly responsive. Below you can hear the tune “I Insist,” where the fleet, slaloming lines on the surface seem privileged over the microscopic internal interplay, so dig deep when you listen.
Oùat’s Sonic Advent Calendar
There are few bands I dig more than Oùat, the Berlin-Paris trio with bassist Joel Grip, drummer Michael Griener, and pianist Simon Sieger that puts its own compelling spin on Matthew Shipp’s Black Mystery School pianists, particularly Elmo Hope, Herbie Nichols, and Hasaan Ibn Ali. Last year the group released two fantastic albums for Umlaut: Elastic Bricks was dominated by tunes written by Grip, with some help from Sieger, while The Strange Adventures of Jasper Klint was a track-by-track interpretation of Coyote, a brilliant, sadly overlooked album by Swedish pianist Per Henrik Wallin. This past Saturday Grip hosted a private event at his studio, with hourly sets by the trio, along with a couple of special guests. I missed the sets with percussionist Bex Burch, but I loved the one they played with clarinetist Rudi Mahall.
One of the group’s recent recording projects is a collaborative album with the reedist to be called The Straight Horn of Rudi Mahall, a play on the Steve Lacy album. But instead of Lacy’s straight horn, the soprano saxophone, this one focuses on Mahall’s axe, the clarinet, his original instrument—he’s much better known for his work on the bass clarinet. That album is due early next year on Two Nineteen Records, the Berlin imprint that’s issued the last couple of albums by Die Enttäuschung, the exceptional quartet both Mahall and Griener play in. The trio has been so enthused about its recent work it decided to make a bunch of it available right away. Last week Oùat launched a nice holiday project—a musical advent calendar—posting a new free track on its Bandcamp page every day leading up to Christmas, under the title Trial of Future Animals. Below you can hear “Space Boogie,” a tune they recorded in October which captures the trio’s knotty swing in a nutshell. But half of the four tunes they’ve already shared eschew any sort of formula—to be expected with this cast—including some gonzo singing on “The Gong Song” and twisted folk-derived/quasi-ritualistic flute tooting on “Supreme.” I can’t think of a better gift this year, although you might want to leave something for the musicians.
Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week
December 5: “A” Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin) with Magda Mayas, 8 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
December 5: Reich-Baumgärtner-Pringle Trio: Nick Dunston Quartet (with Tobias Delius, Merve Salgar, and Anil Eraslan), 8:30 PM, Jazz Club A-Trane, Bleibtreustraße 1, 10625 Berlin
December 6: “A” Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin) with Andrea Parkins & Ute Wassermann, 8 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
December 6: Harmonic Space Orchestra (works by Catherine Lamb, Thomas Nicholson & Liisa Hirsch); AFEKT Festival Soloists (works by Janis Petraskevich, Helena Tulve, Monika Mattiesen and Elis Hallik), 7 PM, Emmaus Church, Lausitzer Platz 8A, 10997 Berlin
December 7: Punkt.Vrt.Plastik (Petter Eldh, Kaja Draksler & Christian Lillinger); Pimpon, 8 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
December 7: Goose Green 3 (Joakim Rainer, piano; Klaus Ellerhausen Holm reeds; Bjørn Marius Heggem double bass) with Steve Heather, drums; Anna Kaluza, Nikolaus Neuser, Tommaso Vespo & Jan Roder, 8 PM, Kuhlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin
December 8: Polwechsel (Burkhard Beins, Martin Brandlmayr, Werner Dafeldecker & Michael Moser) with John Butcher & Magda Mayas, 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin
December 8: Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard with Tamara Stefanovich, 8 PM, Kühlhaus Berlin, Luckenwalder Str. 3, 10963 Berlin
December 9: Angelika Niescier, Tomeka Reid & Savannah Harris; Home Stretch (Philipp Gropper, Antonis Anissegos, Dan Peter Sundland, Steve Heather), 8 PM, House of Music, Revalerstr. 99, 10245 Berlin
December 9: David Krakauer & Matt Haimovitz: Akoka (with Johnny Gandelsman, Kathleen Tagg, and Socalled), 7 PM, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin
December 9: Polwechsel (Burkhard Beins, Martin Brandlmayr, Werner Dafeldecker & Michael Moser) with Johnn Butcher, Magda Mayas & Andrea Neumann, 8 PM, Exploratorium, Zossener Strasse 24, 10961, Berlin
Brilliant column, thank you! But alas, I wish the Polwechsel set weren't prohibitively priced, as it's a truly lovely item. Even the individual albums in DL-only format are on the steep side.