I still haven't warmed completely to the idea of laptop improvisation. The historical analogue to software-based music seems to be classical composition, where the graphic score was ultimately the piece. Computer music is bookish work toiled over during late nights in dingy bedrooms, and the heat of the moment can't even withstand the wispy breeze of the ventilator fan. I may never get used to the idea of "jamming" with a wireless mouse.
Still, interesting stuff is happening. How much laptop improv is actually generated on the leading edge of "now" I may never know, but plenty of good records have been released as such. Soundchambers developed out of improvisation and one of three players, Ekkehard Ehlers, is on the 1s and 0s. Joseph Suchy joins him on guitar, and Franz Hautzinger is on trumpet. It's a diverse bunch. Ehlers has a strong sense of composition and a great ear for texture, he's also prolific as hell and seems to basically reinvent himself with each new project. Suchy may be the ultimate Cologne insider, the guy who knows everybody and has had a hand in at least one release by every label in Germany. He producers, mixes and masters, and plays guitar in an odd style without clear reference points. Franz Hautzinger is a university prof and regular on the European improv circuit.
On Soundchambers, this crew of German abstractionists locks together to form a constantly shifting musical triangle. Each of these five tracks is continually in flux, as Ehlers switches between melodic plinks and subterranean noise (his sources are piano samples by Adam Butler [aka Vert] and recordings of boiler rooms), Suchy transmits his far-flung psychedelia, and Hautzinger adds an earthy moan. It's like watching an amoebic blob expanding and contracting on a glass slide.
The first track (no titles) begins like a field recording, with Ehlers providing buzzes and chirps, and then develops into the kind of music that seems to sprout up from the ground. Ehlers' and Suchy lock together to form a thick, wet atmosphere and then the few held notes of Hautzinger's pitch-black trumpet sound like they should be bouncing through a shadowy valley somewhere. If Miles Davis' version of "Concierto de Aranjuez" really roused a great bullfighter back from retirement, Hautzinger's haunting tone would send him back under the covers until the nightmare is over. Another track starts with some clarion trumpet, gradually becomes consumed in machine racket, and then returns five minutes later for a wonderfully lyrical trumpet and guitar duet, where Hautzinger and Suchy team up like Jim Hall and Chet Baker beamed in through a wormhole. The pieces are constantly changing but each has a thematic center.
For all its sputtering noises and relentless sense of movement, Soundchambers is surprisingly accessible. Perhaps because the sound so frequently veers from the familiar (backward guitar, piano, trumpet) to the foreign and back again, the album never fades into the background or becomes fatiguing. An excellent record that's loud like nature with enough structure to appeal to non-musicians.
