I imagine there must be a number of record store managers out there still wondering who or what this Kammerflimmer Kollektief is. After all, while Thomas Weber (the man behind the name) isn't exactly flooding the shelves with releases as quickly as say Acid Mothers Temple, he's still had three releases hit the bins stateside in little under a year. Two of those releases (both Mäander and this newest on Temporary Residence) were domestic issues of once import-only discs, while the recent Hysteria was a new recording for Japan's After Hours label. With three titles (and likely another on the way, noting Weber's prolific nature) in such a short time, many people out there might be scratching their heads wondering which, if any, of these titles to pick up. So, where does Incommunicado stack up next to the other two? Well, it's somewhere in the middle.
In contrast to Payola label mates Tied and Tickled Trio (whose contributors usually number anywhere from 5 to 12 members), this "kollektief" started out as just one guy doing everything. But sometime after those first singles, Weber must've figured the band should live up to its name, so he recruited five other skilled musicians who've since stuck around. While Weber busied himself with electronic manipulations and studio tricks on Hysteria, there's no sign of it here as he plays only guitar. In fact, excepting Anne Vortisch's synthesizer, this is the most organic recording for the group to date.
Those familiar with Mäander might spot a few recognizable track names on this release. The title Incommunicado means "improvisations" and that seemed to be the impetus for this experiment. Apparently, Weber handed out copies of that earlier release to members of his sextet and asked them to study the song structures, tone and composition for a future recording. The result is what we have here. A clever ploy by Weber to recycle previously used material? Not so much. The three carry-over tracks ("Nachtwach," "Gras" and "Rand") are faintly identifiable incarnations of earlier versions. They've been altered in every shape imaginable, sometimes stretching out onto a lengthier jazz terrain and sometimes veering out of control, reduced to disruptive sax squawks, shrieks and machine-gun percussion.
These loose improvisations do a stellar job retaining Kammerflimmer's distinctive sound of rhythmic tensions building into explosive bursts of noise. "Nachtwach" slinks into the picture first and it becomes obvious immediately that this isn't going to be Weber's show. Reduced to mainly a background fixture on guitar, this album belongs to bassist Johannes Frisch and saxophonist Dietrich Foth. Frisch wastes no time launching the band out of the gate and digs his heels in as the band pieces together a new version of Weber's composition. That characteristic blast of noise still makes its presence known, though. Playing around the original theme at the start, the sextet eventually careens after a few minutes into Foth's high register squeals and Michael Ströder's punctuated bouts with the drum kit.
The identifiable "Gras" follows and the group immediately references the original track before slowly assembling a wholly new sound entity. Building at a much slower pace than anything else on the disc, the group allows space and silence to have as vital a role in this piece as their playing. Extending far past the 12-minute mark, this is just about as quiet and evocative a song as anything they've ever done. Violinist Heike Wendelin and Foth begin to fill the space with sporadic noises, quivering drones out of the violin and tiny squeaks from the sax. About 10 minutes in, things start to get a little haywire as Frisch begins to bang his bow against the bass strings. Ströder at times pretends he's keeping time with a marching band, while Foth sends forth a handful of shuddering shrieks from the sax. Stretching out into epic territory, "Gras" is the finest moment here. It's reliant as much on sparseness and Kammerflimmer's members listening to each other as it is the group playing together. With seemingly no pressure to sustain the ordinary rhythmic tension, the individual members are able to explore different sound regions and bounce new ideas off each other.
Along with the other two Mäander tracks, there's "Rand,"a truncated sound detonation that ends as quickly as it begins. Lasting only 50 seconds, it's a feverish, ecstatic blast with every member playing as loud and abrasive as the next. Coming off like a live, improvised version of Weber's signature burst of static hiss and tape noise, the worst part about the song is its abruptness; it ends so quickly it leaves the listener salivating for more. Instead of lurching into something expected like a dissonance-filled wall of sax wail and shrill violin, the band quickly drifts into a Robert Wyatt cover: "Venti Latir" from his early 90s EP A Short Break. It's a beautiful violin-driven update of the original, lilting gently back and forth on Wendelin's strings. It's a rarity for Weber's group, placing more emphasis on the swaying melody than rhythm or shaping the tension.
The final two tracks are new songs, "Kissen" and "Holler." The first of the two is a directionless drone centered on the synthesizer, violin and bass. Problem is, the band doesn't really allow itself enough space or time to pull the track into anything more than a gliding mess and the whole thing ends up sounding out of place. "Holler," on the other hand, is a sheer delight. It's less than a minute of Frisch vehemently scraping his bow across the bass strings, the result being something analogous to that of John Cale or Tony Conrad's abrasive string treatments in Dream Syndicate.
With only six tracks (three of those being revisions of earlier songs), Incommunicado might seem to fall short. However, this is an album that requires time to unfold. I'm in the unique position of having been one of the people who bought the earlier import version of this, which was released almost simultaneously with Mäander overseas. Having had time to digest this album more than I normally would with a review, I can say that, at first, it seems like a disjointed affair with tracks like "Gras" wandering purposelessly around and the bursting "Rand" and "Holler," which both stand in contrast to that meandering exploration. But given repeated listening and time to unfurl, the pieces here stand alongside the best stuff in Weber's bag of tricks, proving that he's as adept in the group improvisation setting as he was flying solo in the studio.
