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Art Lange
Kenneth Goldsmith
Michael Rosenstein
Stuart Broomer
Brian Marley
Thom Jurek
Bill Shoemaker
Kenny G.
Patrik Landolt
Thomas Rothschild
Reiner Kobe
Markus Müller
Peter Niklas Wilson
Hannes Schweiger
Art Lange
Strapping on his accordion or taking apart a clarinet to blow a piercing whistle through the mouthpiece, Rüdiger Carl gives the appearance of a dentist or businessman playing a wedding reception just for fun. Actually, as a veteran of the European free jazz scene in groups like the Canvas Trio and Globe Unity, and as a longtime partner of pianist Irène Schweizer, Carl is a folk musician in the best sense of the word. Seldom in the spotlight himself, he is content to play a supporting role in whatever music is required for a given situation, whether that means supplying a seductive tenor sax obbligato behind Lol Coxhill warbling the old Bing Crosby hit “Moonlight Becomes You”, or creating a sandpaper-like texture from his accordion on an abstract textural exploration. Behind those suspenders beats the heart of a rogue sound manipulator.
Book is like a snapshot album of the years 1977-96, showing us Carl in his element – a strange world of casual humor and serious sound experiments spiked with a healthy dose of dada, where a lush chanson version of Ellington’s “Prelude To A Kiss” coexists with noisy lo-fi analogue overdubbing, cheesy drum machines, and wickedly enthusiastic free soloing. For Carl, there seems to be no difference between a gentle clarinet blues dedicated to Jimmy Giuffre, a cubist collision of electronic and acoustic timbres, or an environmental study of room echoes – it’s all just music. These two CDs are crammed with brief historical vignettes, documenting unrecorded groups like Irène’s Hot Four (Schweizer, Carl, the late South African bassist Johnny Dyani, and Dutch drum hooligan Han Bennink) and a provocative 1979 trio with Hans Reichel on violin and Maarten Altena on cello, as well as several collaborations with The Red Crayola’s Mayo Thompson (who adds found text narration to free Improv), a single piece with Einstürzende Neubauten’s Andrew Unruh, and the rotating membership of Carl’s own September Band and Cowws.
Cowws (an acronym of the original member’s names – Carl, bassist Jay Oliver, guitarist Stephan Wittwer, violinist Phil Wachsmann, and pianist Schweizer) has been together for 12 years now with only one change in personnel (bassist Arjen Gorter has replaced the late Oliver). Familiarity might avoid breeding contempt, but it can’ entirely bypass the danger of a certain amount of complacency. For Virtual Cowws, recorded in 1996 but rearranged a year later, Carl, as composer and conceptualist, devised a project to short circuit the group’s improvisational habits. Initially outlining a set of carefully timed events and descriptive instructions for the players, Carl recorded each member’s improvised part separately, and combined the tracks later. The resulting musical fabric is altogether convincing, and confusing it sounds like an ensemble, listening reacting and withdrawing, all in real-time. But while the musicians have created the details in isolation, Carl has constructed the form – measuring the irregular pulses, overlapping the guitar shrieks and piano patterns, criss-crossing the violin lines and accordion chords – with a sound collagist’s deft feel for strikingly juxtaposed images and textures. The music stands on its own, but the intention and intelligence behind it come from Rüdiger Carl.
from: The Wire # 180, February 1999
Kenneth Goldsmith
I’ve always loved the freedom that the art world grants to people working between disciplines. The place is filled with actors who took a wrong turn and became performance artists and writers who are too far out to cut it in mainstream publishing. Somehow, they all end up in the art world, which tolerates and occasionally even supports their practice. Over the years, art schools have produced scads of musicians from David Byrne to Christian Marclay. Recently, artists Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler released a three CD set of their art school band, the Poetics, which sounds wonderfully eclectic some 20 years later. Mayo Thompson’s Red Krayola has been delving in and out of the art world for just as long, employing such well-known artists as Werner Büttner and Stephen Prina to sit in with the band. There’s a certain type of freedom to be had working outside your chosen field. If you don’t know the rules, they’re easy to break.
There’s a new three-CD retrospective set of Rüdiger Carl out, and although he lives squarely in the music world, he’s got a real art school attitude toward his practice. At his best, he sounds positively untrained and in doing so breaks a ton of new ground. Carl’s been making improvised music since 1968, and while his primary instrument is the accordion, what really shines is his attitude: He’s incredibly experimental and open-minded. Of the three discs, he’s thrown in one of straight-up improv with a bunch of crack musicians for good measure. It’s okay, but the real actions on the other two, which are packed with 50 tracks of wide-ranging wacky experiments with a host of wonderful musicians including Lol Coxhill, Hans Reichel and Mayo Thompson.
In addition, he’s got a long running group called COWWS Quintet who put out an amazing disc on FMP in 1989 called Seite A / Seite A (FMP S-23), much of which is included here. COWWS play a mixture of sentimental waltzes and free improvisation. The cool thing is that they don’t distinguish between the two; instead they play both styles with equal conviction. This disc is full of great moments like a fucked-up lounge version of “My Favorite Things” played on a cheesy organ and snare drum kit. Throughout the cut, Carl lobs a variety of random synthesizer squawks and washes, bells, explosions and other disturbances into the tune-it sounds like the end of the world. Then there’s a cut where Mayo Thompson sings an appropriated AP news story about a chess match over a recording of Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso”. It’s got all the balls of the Hampton Grease Band’s “Halifax”, where Bruce Hampton screamed the text from a travel brochure over dissonant guitars.
Miniature improvisations abound that take their cue from Darius Milhaud’s mini-symphonies and operettas – called the pocket improvisations – done with jangly fuzzed-out electric guitar, violin and accordions. Then there’s fake Pygmy music and odd sound poetry resembling Kurt Schwitters in a monkey house; a version of the “Blue Danube” waltz that’s eventually drowned out by the sounds of running water; and a cartoonish version of Pharoah Sanders “Upper and Lower Egypt” that sounds more like a spaghetti western soundtrack than Sanders’ cosmic jazz masterpiece. There’s also a cool version of Mancini’s “WC Fields and I”, which sounds like the Beau Hunks playing Little Rascals. It’s all wobbly and out of tune.
Finally, there’s a ton of schmaltzy waltzes here. Carl, the accordionist, has a romantic streak a mile wide and he’s not afraid to kick out Duke Ellington standards. There’s even a version of Lol Coxhill singing “Moonlight Becomes You”, which stiffens it’s sappiness with irony.
In 1994, Carl put out a disc with daxophonist Hans Reichel, much of which appears here. The daxophone is a homemade wooden instrument that’s stroked to make the oddest sounds you’ve ever heard. (Electrify a cow’s moo and you’ll get an idea.) Reichel’s warped daxophone melds gorgeously with Carl’s drunken accordion. Together, they deconstruct 12-bar blues, fake Eastern European music and Brazilian tropicalia. There’s also a wonderful collaboration between Carl, Reichel and the Kipper Kids that incorporates chugging train sounds mixed with wheezing accordions and a screaming daxophone. This disc is great fun, packed with great playing – a winning example of the idea that you don’t have to sacrifice anything. On the contrary, the more the merrier – as long as it’s done with humor and sensitivity, something many purists could learn from.
from: New York Press, April 28, 1999
Michael Rosenstein
While European and German improvisation has slowly gained a higher profile over the years, somehow the spotlight has seemed to miss Rüdiger Carl. He has been an active member of the European improvised music scene since the late ‘60s, leading one of the first handfuls of FMP LPs, as an early member of the Globe Unity Orchestra, and through longstanding musical relationships with musicians such as Irène Schweizer, Hans Reichel, and Sven-Åke Johansson. Throughout his musical career, he has been a staunch individualist. This was dramatized in particular by his decision to virtually forsake the tenor saxophone, focusing instead on the clarinet and particularly the accordion. The release of this 3 CD set may do much to elevate Carl’s profile and show listeners how influential he has been through his dogged pursuit of a broad-ranging music imbued with his off-kilter personal vision.
The first two CDs, titled Book, offer a sort of retrospective of the music Carl has been involved in over the last two decades. The cuts range from a 1977 trio with Schweizer and Louis Moholo to pieces recorded in 1996 with the amateur artist/musician group Jailhouse. With 46 short pieces spread over 2 CDs, this serves as a sketchbook, scrapbook of Carl’s widely divergent musical interest. Culled from previously released albums, private recordings, concert tapes, and practice sessions, there is everything from abstract, collective free improvisation to crooning standards to waltzes to folkish melodies to Ellington covers to skewed rock tunes to searing free Jazz. Roughly one third of the pieces are with the collective Cowws Quintet (Carl / Oliver / Wachsmann / Wittwer / Schweizer) which proves to be one of Carl’s most fertile associations. This is a group that can gently sweep along with a lilting waltz, deliver a convincingly heartfelt tribute to Jimmy Guiffre, crash along with a stuttering, rockish abandon, or freely improvise with a startlingly abstract counterpoint. The addition of the skewed vocals of Mayo Thomson on many of the Cowws cuts adds a sense of dada theatre in stark juxtaposition to the more intricate musical underpinnings. An early incarnation of the September Band (Carl/Reichel/Lovens/Oliver without the addition of vocalist Shelley Hirsch, who was to join later) is represented by a half-dozen selections. Here, Carl’s wheezing accordion and snaking clarinet is paired with Reichel’s sighing and grunting daxophone over the propulsive rhythms of two basses. Carl’s torrid tenor sax is featured in free Jazz forays along with Schweizer, Bennink, and Dyani as well as a single cut with Reichel on violin and Maarten Altena on cello. This is contrasted with goofy splayed readings of “My Favorite Things” or “Ituri Forest” with cheap samples and stuttering electric keyboards looped and stretched. Duets with Reichel, odd one-off bands, and even a sonorous reading of “Moonlight Becomes You”, with Lol Coxhill crooning over the smoky backing of Carl, von Schlippenbach, Oliver and Johansson are scattered over the two discs along with solo accordion, clarinet, and piano pieces that offer a glimpse at Carl’s instrumental mastery. With most pieces flying by at the 2-4 minute range, these CDs are like a dizzying musical kaleidoscope.
On paper, the project captured on Virtual COWWS sounds like a dry, academic exercise. Carl was intrigued with the idea of finding a method for making music that balanced improvisation and composition. He envisioned pieces that combined and overlapped sounds, with juxtaposing textures, colors, and velocity. Instead of composing a setting for improvisation, he developed graphical and numerical scores that specified time units, colors, moods, and dynamics. He then had each musician go into the studio separately for a two-hour period to record their improvised interpretations. These tapes were used to construct the resulting pieces. Without reading the liner notes, it would be impossible to tell that this resulted from studio wizardry and not a collectively improvised recording. In the liner notes, Carl talks about how much of this is owed to “the way musical memory functions…The Quintet had its own typical sound, no matter if we played together or if we wanted to avoid each other or if we followed, as in this case, a sequence of numbers, there is immediately a characteristic Cowws-texture”. Because of their decade-long association, the musicians seemed to be able to hear how their voices would interact, even without the other musicians in the room. The pieces unfold with starling textural and linear detail. Part of the success lies in the warm spacious recording. Rather than densely layer overdubbed parts, for the most part Carl treated each player as a discrete element, keeping the sense of the quintet dynamic. Chamber-like delicacy is countered with brusque clashing textures; melodic kernels are punctuated with jarring atonality. But there is always an overriding sense of flow and structural momentum. One could easily imagine the resulting pieces being scored and given to the players as the basis for a further collective real-time improvisation.
This 3 CD set is an astonishing document that serves as a fantastic overview and introduction to Carl’s fertile and expansive and improvisational talent. Though the range is diverse, there is never a sense of a disjointed dilettante, but rather of a probing, individual exploring and pushing himself to find personal approaches to improvisation. Serious fans of improvised music owe it to themselves to hear this essential recording.
from: Cadence Magazine # 5, May 1999
Stuart Broomer
Declining Description
What is initially notable about Rüdiger Carl’s music, apart from its quality, is a certain absence of the doctrinaire. Just as his use of clarinet, saxophones and accordion redefines the term multi-reed player, Carl’s music is open – to free improv and indeterminacy, old jazz tunes and duck calls, rock guitar and funny lyrics, anarchy and kitsch, the conventionally beautiful and the pointedly silly. FMP has recently issued a three CD set of Carl’s music in which all of those elements are present. The first two CDs, called Book, are an anthology, some 46 tracks by Carl in various musical situations recorded between 1977 and 1996, with some emphasis on the Cowws Quintet project from 1987 to 1997 and the September Band (Carl, Hans Reichel, Paul Lovens and assorted others) of the 90s. The third CD, Virtual Cowws, is a single piece in 7 segments, its material recorded in November of 1996 and then arranged and mastered over the next two years. For Carl, it is the completion of the “conceptual Cowws” project.
Book is so diverse as to resist any simple listing or description of its contents, so varied that it might be perfect to recommend to someone who doesn’t have any other CDs or for inclusion in a time capsule as ersatz representation of “twentieth century music”. It might be one man’s dream (collectively realized) of a radio show, jump-cutting from perfectly executed antique waltzes suitable for a hotel ballroom to solo piano reharmonizations of the Saints to the wall of free jazz tenor: Those 46 tracks range in length from 1:18 to 6:23, with few over 3 minutes, and many are minor masterpieces. The shortest is a conventional quintet reading of Monk’s Misterioso with voice and lyrics by Mayo Thompson about a chess tournament involving human masters and computers that manages to end with the phrase, “who is also the chess columnist for the New York Times”. The longest, as Monkish in manner (thanks to the piano of Alexander von Schlippenbach), is Moonlight Becomes You, featuring a vocal by Lol Coxhill before a noisy and distracted audience. There are direct invocations of assorted “world” musics and the jazz tradition from Ellington to Pharoah Sanders, but they’re tied together by Carl’s willingness to try anything and his reluctance to discard anything. He continually refocuses in this special assembly on the social structure and dynamics of listening to music, which is not to deny that the second CD ends with a piece called Cascade, a tape of a string section playing the Blue Danube accompanied by the equally loud or louder running of a faucet.
The extended piece Virtual Cowws (54:10) is a special inquiry into the structure of the musical event, performed by Carl on accordion and clarinet, Arjen Gorter on bass, Phil Wachsmann on violin and electronics, Stephan Wittwer on electric guitar, and Irène Schweizer on piano and percussion. It began as a numerically generated composition in which each of the group’s five members recorded individually improvising the musical specifics within Carl’s directives for length and mood or approach, e.g. “Play icy for two seconds, then play rumbling sounds for 27 seconds and so on”. Carl was then faced with the task of combining and shaping the material into the 7 part piece heard here, including the final movement that includes material especially recorded for looping.
Carl’s working title for the piece was 50 years without intention, a reference to the origins of John Cage’s work with musical indeterminacy, but Virtual Cowws has a more complex relation to intentionality and production. The specific content is improvised by musicians who cannot hear or respond to each other’s “parts” (though “attuned” to one another’s processes by years of improvisational interaction). Carl’s own part is not a coherent “role” but is segmented into a series of intellectually discreet functions. He is the work’s architect, producing the “plan” with input from two mathematicians; he is also one of its improvisers; perhaps “ultimately”, he is the work’s assembler – reconciling an original plan with the actual content produced spontaneously by his partners. Rather than overwhelming his musicians with formal constraints, Carl’s work is determined by the specific character of what they have invented.
While the relationship to “chance” music is real (one can feel a kinship between this music and that of Cage and Feldman), the role of improvisation changes everything, as does Carl’s non-doctrinaire combining and shifting of elements in the final “composition”. Given those brief directives, the improvisers may be more focused on their individual bits, without the formal contours of a complete individual solo piece or a group interaction. Listening to Virtual Cowws is to experience the compound distances of its process, its actually specific placelessness in which its processes draw us toward both the august invention of its bits and its complex and totalizing parameters. In effect, it’s related to the rise of the sampling machine (even if it doesn’t use one) as well as improvised and indeterminate composition. We are in a unique auditory space here, both abstract and intense, and the piece has sufficient scale and meaning (both constantly redistributed) that it changes substantially with each hearing.
Part of the value of this “package” is in the relational complexity that arises between the montage/scrapbook approach of the anthology (Book) and the seemingly unitive, extended work of Virtual Cowws. Both use processes of collage and assembly and both emphasize the value of live wit over the redundant and codified. Each invites us to rehear the other, and to hear.
from: CODA Magazine # 287, September/October 1999
Brian Marley
Enjoyment is a key word, too, for Rüdiger Carl. He offers himself to a wide range of playing situations, and makes no distinction between high and low art. Hence Virtual Cowws, a cerebral and abstract aural jigsaw puzzle, fits well with the inspired buffoonery of the September Band (whose version of Pharaoh Sanders’ ‘Upper and Lower Egypt’ is an absolute delight); or for that matter, Jailhouse, who mix Sun Ra’s slouching rhythms and rinky-dink 1970s synthesizer sound with a touch of Casio-style Kraftwerk in the ambience of a Lee Perry dub.
Book (2CDs) contains rehearsal tapes, snippets of live performance, studio solos, and several pieces culled from records that are mostly no longer available. The Cowws Quintet (often with Mayo Thompson’s recitations and maximally-amped guitar) features heavily, as do the September Band and Jailhouse. There are also contributions from Buben (Carl’s clarinet/violin duo with Hans Reichel), the Main Quartet, Irène’s (Schweizer’s) Hot Four, and the attractively gushing Kassel water organ at the cinema Kaskade. Tracks are invariably short and to the point. After three CDs of most people’s music you wouldn’t wish ho tear a minute more. With Rüdiger Carl it’s just an appetite-whetter.
from: Rubberneck # 29, 1999
Thom Jurek
One of the most wily and most inventive figures on the German free music scene has to be Rüdiger Carl. His principal instruments are accordion and clarinet; he is, to say the least, a curious bandleader. On first glance, even his appearance suggests he would be the guy directing a wedding band rather than the terminally unruly and humorous Virtual Cowws. But that's his job: composer, improviser, iconoclast, multi-instrumentalist, and gadfly in the ointment of that thing we call "music." This three-CD retrospective of Carl's projects both inside and outside the Virtual Cowws — most of the pieces on CDs one and two are extended versions of the Cowws quintet — reveals an almost unbelievable range of musical adventure, and perhaps even genius. The first two discs (Book) are comprised of 46 selective moments in time, many of them collaborations with artists all over the globe both physically and musically. They include Mayo Thompson, Shelley Hirsch, Han Bennink, the Kipper Kids, Johnny Dyani, Hans Reichel (a sometimes member of the band), Lol Coxhill, Lupa Herz, and others. And some of these are outrageous: Listen to Thelonious Monk's classic "Misterioso" with a vocal added by the terminally wonderful weirdo Mayo Thompson, and you'll hear something very different. The rest of the material on discs one and two is by an earlier edition of the Cowws called the September Band, the Cowws themselves, and various members in either solo or other smaller-than-quintet settings, recorded live, in rehearsal, and in private. All tracks were recorded between 1977 and 1996. In other words, when taken with disc three — which is only the Virtual Cowws (Carl, accordion and clarinet; Arjen Gorter, double bass; Phil Wachsmann, violin and electronics; Stephan Wittwer, electric guitar; Irène Schweizer, piano and percussion) on one date playing one extended composition — these provide a kind of secret retrospective, a map to a territory in the musical minds of Carl and his collaborators that is very private. That this has been released at all is a small miracle (thank you, FMP). None of the pieces on discs one and two is over six-and-a-half minutes in length, and the recording is thus easy to digest in small bites or large ones. The tunes range from the aforementioned Monk and Duke Ellington to Richard Rodgers and Henry Mancini, and the improvisations come from concerts, earlier issued recordings, and basement tapes — except for disc three which is a previously unissued studio recording. This set, while not bargain-priced, is arguably the finest introduction to group improvisation or "free" music. If you are a Cowws fan, then this is essential; if you are looking for an emotional way in to a musical place you can't wrap your head around, this is definitely it. A truly inspiring collection.
from: All Music Guide
Bill Shoemaker
Carl is one of the most idiosyncratic, if not perplexing, of all European improvisers. For starters, he has a strong compositional element to his work, and his penchant for the aleatory owes more to John Cage than to free jazz antecedents. Additionally, there is an anti-virtuosity element to his aesthetic. The 2-disc Book surveys Carl's activities with appropriate randomness as to chronology or setting. In addition to performances by Carl's main endeavors-September-Band with Hirsch, guitarist Hans Reichel, and drummer Paul Lovens, and Cowws Quintet with Schweizer, violinist Phil Wachsmann, guitarist Stephan Wittwer, and the late bassist Jay Oliver -there are substantive excerpts from performances including Maarten Altena, Han Bennink, and Louis Moholo. The material ranges from Giuffre-like clarinet blues to roiling free jazz, and beyond to Fluxus-flavored accordion pieces. The single disc Virtual Cowws, with Arjen Gorter replacing Oliver, is comprised of seven tape constructions, mixing together solo renditions of procedural scores by each musician. The results are far less cluttered than many improvisations, yet, given the process, retain a strange, spark-like quality; the irony of this contrivance is that the resulting music has an organic feel.
from: Jazz Times, May 1999
Kenny G.
I've always loved the freedom that the art world grants to people working between disciplines. The place is filled with actors who took a wrong turn and became performance artists and writers who are too far out to cut it in mainstream publishing. Somehow, they all end up in the art world, which tolerates and occasionally even supports their practice. Over the years, art schools have produced scads of musicians from David Byrne to Christian Marclay. Recently, artists Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler released a 3 CD set of their art school band, The Poetics, which sounds wonderfully eclectic some 25 years later. Mayo Thompson's Red Krayola has been delving in and out of the art world for just as long, employing such well known artists as Werner Büttner and Stephen Prina to sit in with the band. There's a certain type of freedom to be had working outside your chosen field; if you don't know the rules, they're easy to break. There's a new 3CD retrospective set of Rüdiger Carl out, and although he lives squarely in the music world, he's got a real art school attitude toward his practice. At his best, he sounds positively untrained and in doing so, breaks a ton of new ground.
Carl's been making improvised music since 1968 and while his primary instrument is the accordion, what really shines is his attitude - he's incredibly experimental and open-minded. Of the three discs, he's thrown in one disc of straight-up improv with a bunch of crack musicians for good measure. It's OK, but the real action is on the other two discs which are packed with 50 tracks of wide-ranging wacky experiments with a host of wonderful musicians including Lol Coxhill, Hans Reichel and Mayo Thompson. In addition, he's got a long-running group called COWWS Quintet who put out an amazing disc on FMP in 1989 called Seite A Seite, much of which is included here. COWWS play a mixture of sentimental waltzes and free improvisation. The cool thing is that they don't distinguish between the two - instead they play both styles with equal conviction.
This disc is choked full of great moments like a fucked-up lounge version of "My Favorite Things" played on a cheesy organ and snare drum kit. Throughout the cut, Carl lobs a variety of random synthesizer squawks and washes, bells, explosions and other disturbances into the tune - it sounds like the end of the world. Then there's a cut where Mayo Thompson is singing an appropriated AP news story about a chess match over a recording of Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso." It's got all the balls of the Hampton Grease Band's "Halifax," where Bruce Hampton screamed the text from a travel brochure over dissonant guitars.
Miniature improvisations abound which take their cue from Darius Milhaud's mini-symphonies and operettas - call the pocket improvisations - done with jangly fuzzed out electric guitar, violin and accordions. Then there's fake pygmy music and odd sound poetry that sounds like Kurt Schwitters in a monkey house; a version of the Blue Danube Waltz that's eventually gets drowned out by the sounds of running water; and cartoonish version of Pharaoh Sanders "Upper and Lower Egypt" that sounds more like a spaghetti western soundtrack than Sanders' cosmic jazz masterpiece. There's also a cool version of Mancini's W.C. Fields and I, which sounds like the Beau Hunks playing Little Rascals. It's all wobbly and out of tune. Finally, there's a ton of schmaltzy waltzes here. Carl, the accordionist, has got a romantic streak a mile wide and he's not afraid to kick out Duke Ellington standards - there's even a version of Lol Coxhill singing "Moonlight Becomes You," which stiffens its sappiness with irony.
In 1994, Carl put out a disc with daxophonist Hans Reichel, much of which appears here. The daxophone is a homemade wooden instrument that's stroked to make the most odd sounds you've ever heard. Electrify a cow's moo and you'll get an idea of what it sounds like. Reichel's warped daxophone melds gorgeously with Carl's drunken accordion. Together, they deconstruct 12 bar blues, fake Eastern European ethnic music and Brazilian tropicalia. There's also a wonderful collaboration between Carl, Reichel and the Kipper Kids which incorporates chugging train sounds mixed with wheezing accordions and a screaming daxophone.
This disc is great fun. And it's packed with great playing. It's a winning example of the idea that you don't have to sacrifice anything; on the contrary, the more the merrier - as long as its done with humor and sensitivity. It's a win-win situation that many purists can learn from.
from: New York Press, 1999
Patrik Landolt
Schöner kann ein CD-Geschenk nicht sein. Die Kartonbox rot mit blauen Buchstaben des Musikernamens, die beiden CDs wiederholen die vier Lettern, blau auf schwarzem Grund, rot auf blauem Grund. Das von Günter Förg gestaltete Kunstwerk enthält drei Stunden Musik mit Rüdiger Carl; ein Blick auf das Schaffen der letzten zwanzig Jahre des deutschen Akkordeonisten und Klarinettisten. Die eine CD dokumentiert Aufnahmen von Rüdiger Carls COWWS-Quintett (Arjen Gorter, Phil Wachsmann, Stephan Wittwer, Irène Schweizer). Auf den weiteren CDs nimmt uns Carl mit auf seine Reisen und lässt uns teilhaben an Live-Mitschnitten, Studioaufnahmen und privaten Sessions. Auf insgesamt 22 Stücken hören wir Carl mit seinen LebensbegleiterInnen wie Mayo Thompson, Hans Reichel, Irène Schweizer oder Lol Coxhill. Ein Dokument einer lebenstrunkenen und abenteuerlustigen Szene.
aus: WOZ/Die Wochenzeitung, 1999
Thomas Rothschild
FMP gehört zu den wenigen Labels, bei denen es, anstelle der üblichen Beliebigkeit, eine starke Identifikation von Künstlern und Plattenfirma gibt. Zu den Stamm-Musikern gehört der Akkordeonist und Klarinettist Rüdiger Carl. Die Kombination aus der Doppel-CD Book und der CD Virtual Cowws, einem – vom Schweizer Radio unterstützten – editorischen Wagnis, gestattet einen tieferen Blick in die Werkstatt dieses Künstlers, in die Experimente des vergangenen Jahrzehnts und den aktuellen Stand des Quintetts mit dem rätselhaften Namen COWWS, der sich offenbar von den Namen der Beteiligten herleitet.
aus: Frankfurter Rundschau, 30. Januar 1999
Reiner Kobe
Die in rote Pappe gepackte 3-CD-Box „Book“ präsentiert den Wuppertaler Saxophonisten, Klarinettisten und Akkordeonisten Rüdiger Carl, der seit Jahren in der frei improvisierenden Szene einen Namen hat. Seine Persönlichkeit wird in allen Varianten ausgeleuchtet, da verschiedene Beispiele seiner Arbeit dokumentiert sind. Zwei CDs befassen sich mit Carls Schaffen aus verschiedenen Perioden. Die Spannweite der 46 Titel (!), von denen einzig vier bisher veröffentlich worden sind, reicht von expressiven Eruptionen (mit Irène Schweizer) über die Improvisationen der September Band und des Bergisch-Brandenburgischen Quartetts bis zum Duo Buben. Es sind die verschiedenen Herangehensweisen, wie sie auf diesen Proben-, Studio- und Live-Aufnahmen deutlich werden, die schließlich ein faszinierendes Klangbild voller Homogenität bilden. „Mit einem kühlen Kopf und einer gewissen Distanziertheit“ ging Carl, wie er im Booklet betont, an sein neues Cowws-Projekt heran. Da das Potential dieses Quintetts, das ein Jahrzehnt Bestand hatte, „ziemlich ausgelotet“ ist, hat Carl die einstigen Kollegen Phil Wachsmann, v, Irène Schweizer, p, und Stephan Wittwer, g, ins Studio geholt – an Stelle des verstorbenen Bassisten Jay Oliver trat Arjen Gorter. Deren Klangmaterial wurde einzeln eingespielt nach genauen Vorgaben. Im Nachhinein wurden die einzelnen Tracks nach bestimmten Zahlenkombinationen übereinandergelegt. Dass schließlich ein Ergebnis in Klang und Zusammenspiel schlüssig gelingt, mag überraschen. Die virtuellen Cowws sind real, insgesamt ein, wie es selbstredend heißt „musikalisches Familienalbum“, wie es in der freien Musik nicht gerade üblich ist. Es führt mit sprödem Charme auf drei CDs zwei Jahrzehnte Beständigkeit und Kreativität vor.
aus: Jazz Podium # 7/8, Juli/August 1999
Markus Müller
Aus vielen Gründen scheinen Rüdiger Carls „Book“ und „Virtual COWWS“ einem Universalismus verpflichtet zu sein, der dem Jäger und Sammler Chadbourne nicht fremd sein kann. Das Opus Magnum der europäischen Musik der letzten 20 Jahre schlägt auf der Suche nach dem verlorenen guten Geschmack alle Kapitel auf, die den Kern vieler Musik seit 1977 ausmachen. Carls Spektrum ist dabei insofern universal, als dass die auf „Book“ dokumentierten Beispiele seiner Arbeit von wild-energetischen Eruptionen mit Irène Schweizer über die Kombinatorik der „COWWS“ zum genialen Dilettantismus von „Jailhouse“, dem Erfolgsduo „Buben“, den Improvisationsimpressionen der „September-Band“, den Kurzgeschichten mit Mayo Thompson, dem „Berlin-Brandenburgischen Quartett“ und vielem, vielem anderen reichen und vom „Gutem Lied“ über Komposition und Improvisation auch verschiedene Herangehensweisen verhandeln. Dabei ergänzen sich die dramatisch verschiedenen Einheiten zu einem faszinierend homogenen Bild, das doch und vor allem die jeweils spezifische Arbeitsweise feiert. Schon im „Book“ bricht Carl Selbstbeschränkungen der üblichen Veröffentlichungspraxis der Improvisation auf. Statt einer historischen, authentischen Dokumentation des Hier und Jetzt verarbeitet er kompakte Glanzlichter in und zu einem übergeordneten Zusammenhang. Mit „Virtual COWWS“ geht er noch einen Schritt weiter, indem er das Klangmaterial des Ensembles von jedem einzelnen Musiker einzeln nach Zeit- und geradezu literarischen Vorgaben einspielen ließ. Erst im Nachhinein legte Carl die einzelnen Tracks einer Zahlenkombinatorik folgend übereinander. Sind die Elemente dieser Arbeit improvisatorisch, so sind der weitere Bearbeitungsprozess und das Resultat wiederum streng kompositorisch. Das Resultat ist auch ein wieder neuer Höhepunkt der zehnjährigen Zusammenarbeit eines der wichtigsten Konzepte in der Neuen Improvisierten Musik. Und der Mythos der gemeinsamen Improvisation wird im Rahmen dieses letzten Auftritts der Band ganz der Verantwortung des Zuhörers übergeben. Einer der unbesungenen Helden der Improvisation ist Phil Wachsmann. Der in Uganda geborene Sohn eines führenden Musikethnologen hat bei Nadja Boulanger Geige studiert, früh Harry Partch kennengelernt und zu Beginn der 70er u.a. Stockhausen, Cage und Cornelius Cardew interpretiert. Er hat mit allen wichtigen europäischen Improvisatoren gespielt, ist Mitglied des großartigen „Quintet Moderne“ und war auch ein Fünftel „COWWS“.
aus: Jazzthing # 28, April/Mai 1999
Peter Niklas Wilson
Er ist Musik auf der Spur, „die diesen spezifischen Schub mit der Improvisation einhergeht, bricht und hinterfragt“. Mit dem vorliegenden 3-CD-Paket führt der Frankfurter Multi-Instrumentalist Rüdiger Carl diverse Strategien vor, „improvisierte Musik mit einem kühlen Kopf und einer gewissen Distanziertheit zusammenzubringen“. Book ist vordergründig so etwas wie ein Familienalbum: eine zwei CDs füllende Kollektion von 66 akustischen Schnappschüssen aus zwanzig Jahren, die Carl in unterschiedlichster Gesellschaft zeigt: solo, im Dialog mit Hans Reichel, als Mitglied der genial-dilettantisch agierenden Künstlergruppe „Jailhouse“, in ad hoc-Ensembles mit Kollegen wie Günter „Baby“ Sommer und Louis Moholo, und natürlich mit Langzeit-Projekten wie der „September Band“ und dem Quintett „Cowws“.
Man kann dieses Album auf verschiedene Arten lesen: als Sammlung persönlicher akustischer Souvenirs, als kleinen Streifzug durch die europäische improvisierte Musik der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte – und als Dokument mannigfaltiger Versuche, den naiven Expressionismus des befreiten Jazz zu konterkarieren: durch skurrilen Humor, durch Einbeziehung von Texten, durch Konfrontation mit traditionellen musiksprachlichen Elementen, seien es ein Duke Ellington-Thema, eine Nino-Rota-Kantilene oder gar das von unzähligen Dixie-Kapellen verschlissene O When the Saints. Jede dieser Betrachtungsweisen ist reizvoll, jede bringt Erkenntnisgewinn.
Ist Book demgemäß ein diachroner Schnitt durch die Musik auf der Suche nach konzeptueller Verbindlichkeit, so ist Virtual Cowws ein synchroner. 1996 ging Carl mit seinen KollegInnen vom „Cowws“ Quintett (Phil Wachsmann, Violine; Stephan Wittwer, Gitarre; Arjen Gorter, Kontrabass; Irène Schweizer, Klavier und Perkussion) in ein Schweizer Studio – doch nicht, um gemeinsam zu improvisieren, sondern um, jeder und jede für sich, Fragmente einzuspielen, die Carl dann anhand eines recht abstrakten Montage-Schemas kombinierte. Was wir hören, ist also ein virtuelles Quintett; was wir an Interaktion zu registrieren meinen, ist entweder unsere Projektion oder aber Carls Konstruktion von Zusammenhang. Ohne den Situations-Charakter des direkten Aufeinander-Einwirkens erhält diese digitale Ensemble-Musik eine eigene, einzigartige Qualität: wie eine gut gehängte Klang-Ausstellung, in der man die Vokabulare dieser fünf Individualisten in ungewohnter Klarheit betrachten kann, befreit von gruppendynamischen Mechanismen. Andere Improvisatoren – Bob Ostertag oder das Wiener Duo Mühlbacher/Dafeldecker – arbeiten mit ähnlichen Prozeduren der digitalen De- und Re-Montage von Improvisation, doch die Ergebnisse gleichen sich nur wenig. Was für die Methode spricht.
aus: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik # 3, Mai/Juni 1999
Hannes Schweiger
Wir haben hier kein Buch der sieben Siegel vor uns, sondern ein offenes Buch der unendlichen Vielfalt der Klänge. Um ein solches verfassen zu können, bedarf es schon einigen Könnens und einer lodernden Leidenschaft. Beide Eigenschaften vereinigen sich in der Person Rüdiger Carls. Vorliegendes Produkt ist eine drei CDs umfassende Personalie über den deutschen Akkordeonisten, Klarinettisten und kaum mehr Saxophonisten. Die Doppel-CD „book“ ist eine Retrospektive über Carls Schaffen der letzten 20 Jahre, und zeigt in äußerst hörenswerter Weise anhand von Hörminiaturen seinen Werdegang vom bedingungslos stürmischen Saxophonakteur, in den Spielgemeinschaften mit Schweizer, Bennink, Dyani oder Schweizer, Moholo über die aberwitzigen Bubenstreiche mit Hans Reichel, die skurrilen Songs mit der Bildende Künstler/Musiker Verbindung „Jailhouse“, die delikaten Spontan-Schöpfungen der „September Band“ bis zum Architekten des Cowws Quintett, dem in den letzten zehn Jahren von Carls Schaffen bestimmendem Projekt der organisierten Improvisation. Diese „Compilation“ zeigt die Entwicklung eines Musikers, der zwischen Freiheit und Ordnung sein nuancenreiches Klangfinden betreibt. Die dritte CD „virtual cowws“ betitelt, enthält Stücke, wie der Titel schon andeutet, die nicht in einer gemeinsamen realen Spielsituation entstanden sind. Jeder der Akteure spielte auf der Grundlage eines ausgeklügelten Instruktionsplanes seinen Part alleine, ohne Kenntnis des Parts des jeweils anderen, ein. Carl arrangierte im Nachhinein die einzelnen Stimmen zu einem imaginären Kollektiv. Im Zusammenwirken ist der typische Klangcharakter des Quintetts augenblicklich gegenwärtig. Jener, der durch unorthodoxe Konzeptionen strukturierten Extempore. Wobei Aussparungen und festgelegte Pausen eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Die „virtuellen“ Kompositionen sind von scharfer Kontur und sperriger Intimität, die eine sinnfordernde Abstraktheit zur Folge hat. Was dieses Klangkonzentrat nicht aufzuweisen hat, ist kalte Künstlichkeit, da in den Tonwendungen einer jeden Stimme persönliche Empfindsamkeiten ein elementarer Aspekt sind. Ein überzeugendes Experiment als Schlussstrich unter die Geschichte eines innovativen, forschenden Improvisationsensembles.
aus: Jazz Live # 122, 1999
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