Burkhard Beins, Michael Thieke, Luca Venitucci - Roman Tics

Burkhard Beins, Michael Thieke, Luca Venitucci - Roman Tics (Cathnor, 2008)

Burkhard Beins: percussion, zither, objects
Michael Thieke: clarinet, zither
Luca Venitucci: accordion, preparations

01-Roman Tics
HERE

Polwechsel & John Tilbury - Field

POLWECHSEL & JOHN TILBURY - Field (HatHut, 2009)

Burkhard Beins: drums, percussion
Martin Brandlmayr: drums, percussion
John Butcher: tenor & soprano saxophones
Werner Dafeldecker: double bass
Michael Moser: cello
John Tilbury: piano

01-Place / Replace / Represent
02-Field

HERE

Keith Rowe & Burkhard Beins - ErstLive 001

Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics
Burkhard Beins: percussion

Taking advantage of the availability of a top-notch recording engineer in the form of Vienna's Christoph Amann, Erstwhile top gun Jon Abbey was able to return home after the two European legs of his 2004 AMPLIFY festival (in Cologne and Berlin respectively) with a bag full of superb recordings, the first batch of which is now out in the form of these four elegant limited edition slimline jewel box releases. Mean spirited souls could moan and groan at Abbey's decision to release as four separate albums music that could quite easily have been brought out as one double CD (the Rowe / Beins set lasts 28'18", the Rowe / Nakamura / Lehn / Schmickler 38'47", the Stangl / Kurzmann 33'03" and the Fennesz quartet a mere 23'44"), but the quality of these performances and their occasional (welcome) deviations from what was beginning to seem like a rather inflexible Erstwhile norm makes Abbey's decision to release them separately more than justified.
Guitarist Keith Rowe and Berlin-based percussionist Burkhard Beins have appeared on disc together before, on the album Grain on Ignaz Schick's Zarek imprint (Zarek 06, 2001). On paper, Beins's exquisitely-paced friction (check out his work with the groups Perlonex, with Schick and Jörg Maria Zeger, and The Sealed Knot with Mark Wastell and Rhodri Davies) along with the slowmotion grit associated with Rowe's Erstwhile and Grob back catalogue might lead punters to expect an austere Weather Sky-like affair, but this set, recorded on May 10th 2004 in Berlin (not May 13th, as the booklet states, in a rare mistake for Erstwhile) is exhilaratingly combative. Rowe's radio, which has never been all that prominent on his previous Erstwhile releases, is in full effect here, picking up Radio Canada dispatches on the Iraq war (a timely reminder that while punters sat in reverential silence in the clubs of Berlin, dirty deeds were afoot in faraway lands) and, at the 15 minute mark, a chunk of Dusty Springfield's "Son Of A Preacher Man" long enough to have Tarantino fans reaching for their Bibles in awe before Rowe and Beins blast it to shit. The torrential downpour of crippled pop and vicious noise that follows should be required daily listening for any stick-up-the-ass snob who complains about this music's supposed sterility, lack of energy and, most importantly, lack of humour. I'm normally no fan of live recordings that explode into enthusiastic cheering for minutes after the music has ended, but for once the decision to let the tapes roll long enough to catch the whoops and hollers of the delighted audience and the joyful, surprised laughter of Keith Rowe himself is to be applauded.

2004 ERSTLIVE 001 (rapidshare/mediafire)

Burkhard Beins - Structural Drift

Burkhard Beins: e-bowed and propelled zither, analogue synthesizer, e.t., looper, igniters, chimes, wood block, steel band, fire and stones

Burkhard Beins is best known as one of the most distinctive percussionists in European free music, performing in groups both in Berlin (Phosphor, Perlonex, Activity Center) and beyond (The Sealed Knot, Trio Sowari), though on the strength of his two solo albums, 2007's Disco Prova and now Structural Drift, he's no slouch as a composer either, bringing the same acute ear for timbre and immaculate sense of timing to more fixed structures. But whereas Disco Prova, with it's rattling machinery and Joy Divison samples, was an affectionate nod to the industrial and new wave music Beins grew up listening to, this new releases's shifting tectonic plates of synthesizers, E-bowed zither and self-designed electronic instruments (including ET, a hendheld oscillator with built-in speakers) belong in a parallel universe of electronic music along with the psychoacoustic wonders of Eliane Radigue and Maryanne Amacher.
Beins's compositions retain the same fondness for occasional sudden shifts of texture and dynamic that characterizes his improvising. Combining purely electronic sounds sourced from a Korg MS20 with his customary organic performing materials, wood and stone, the three pieces on the album were conceived and elaborated during a residency earlier this year in the Lower Saxony village of Worpswede, and the landscape surrounding the village, as shown on the album cover, with it's lonely roads, bare trees and leaden skies, seems appropriate. What on first contact might appear cold and featureless reveals on close listening a remarkable wealth of warmth, colour and detail.
- Dan Warburton, The Wire -

2009 STRUCTURAL DRIFT (rapidshare/mediafire)

Activity Center & Phil Minton

Michael Renkel: acoustic guitar, zither, percussion
Burkhard Beins: percussion, zither
Phil Minton: voice

Vocalist Phil Minton's instinctive ability to pull something new from his throat has to be admired. In the company of guitarist Michael Renkel and percussionist Burkhard Beins (known collectively as Activity Center), Minton finds plenty of material within their music and noisemaking to wrap his vocal cords around, all of which allows his creative persona to fully unfurl as the session progresses. As part of Activity Center he opens up with an astonishing array of guttural squeaks, burps, groans and gasps: what sounds like his very soul is straining to burst free. Accompanied by Renkel's sensitively stroked acoustic guitar and zither and Beins's equally emotive percussion and occasional bowed cymbal, the six pieces here range from the humorous to the grotesque. On the elongated "RubbleRubble", all three musicians fuse together in a constantly shifting surge, punctuated throughout with barks, growls and excited pantings in the dark from Minton's seemingly endless store of vocal distortions. Chased around by Beins and Renkel's fractured instrumentation, the trio rock out to a scattered beat of madness, joy and sheer bedlam.
- Edwin Pouncy, The Wire -

2003 ACTIVITY CENTER & PHIL MINTON (rapidshare/mediafire)

Phosphor - Phosphor

Burkhard Beins: percussion
Alessandro Bosetti: soprano saxophone
Axel Dörner: trumpet, electronics
Robin Hayward: tuba
Annette Krebs: electro-acoustic guitar
Andrea Neumann: inside piano, mixing desk
Michael Renkel: acoustic guitar
Ignaz Schick: live electronics

This outing features a consortium of Berlin, Germany-based musicians who tend to explore the outer limits of abstraction via live electronics, acoustic instruments, and subversive dialogue. Less in your face than similar productions of this ilk, the instrumentalists create an air of suspense amid subdued moments and sparse frameworks. Andrea Neumann utilizes her stripped-down piano parts (strings, resonance board, metal frame & EFX) to counteract tubaist Robin Hayward, percussionist Burkhard Beins, and others for a set teeming with sparsely concocted themes. The octet provides a series of illusory effects in concert with moments of tension and surprise, due to its shrewd amalgamation of peculiar backdrops and concisely executed improvisational episodes. On Part 3 (no song titles), you will hear low-pitched gurgling noises and plucked strings. However, trumpeter Axel Dorner’s atonal hissing sounds cast a strangely exotic spell throughout many of these sequences. Not casual listening, but fascinatingly interesting - the music or noise, depending on which way you perceive it, rings forth like some sort of impressionistic souvenir. Sure, some of us may not include this release among the ongoing rotation. The content might parallel something akin to an avant-garde sculpture or oil painting: thus an artistic entity that deserves to be revisited from time to time.

2001 PHOSPHOR

Phosphor - Phosphor II

Burkhard Beins: percussion, objects, small electrics
Axel Dörner: trumpet, electronics
Robin Hayward: tuba
Annette Krebs: guitar, objects, electronics, tape
Andrea Neumann: inside piano, mixing board
Michael Renkel: prepared nylon string acoustic guitar via computer
Ignaz Schick: turntables, objects, bows

Phosphor, whose self-titled album came out in 2001, waited nearly five years to record its follow-up with Phosphor II. With editing, mixing and manufacturing, it has taken nearly eight years for the session to reach the marketplace.

With all that time that has passed, it is interesting to hear that the original super group, minus Alessandro Bosetti, can easily pick up right where it left off. These Berlin-based musicians practice the microtonal art of minimalist improvisation, yet their sound constructions are easily transferable to disc.

In fact, not having the visual component to their performance pushes the focus onto the sound, not which performer is making what sound—not always any easy thing to achieve.

The music here is, as Miles Davis once described it, about "the silence in between the notes." These eight compositions take that concept to the nth degree. Switches switch, air passes through instruments without notes, static takes the same place as rhythms, and electric charges fuel the tension that gives way to a cosmic release.

The sounds—noise, perhaps—are strangely inviting creatures whose vocabulary is one of a decayed future that meshes the human touch with computer and mechanical sounds that have slipped the moorings of beat and meter. (from ALLABOUTJAZZ)

2009 PHOSPHOR II

Trio Sowari - Shortcut

Phil Durrant: software samplers, treatments
Bertrand Denzler: tenor saxophone

Burkhard Beins: percussion, objects, small electrics

Trio Sowari’s first release, Three Dances, was one of the musical highlights of 2005. Happily, their follow-up, Shortcut, is every bit as good. One of things that’s particularly impressive about it is tenor saxophonist Bertrand Denzler’s astute deployment of the mostly unorthodox sounds he draws from his instrument. In some quarters it has been argued that saxophones are an anathema to EAI, that they sit uncomfortably in the music. Denzler proves otherwise. His blasts of tuned air and percussive pad tapping blend superbly with Burkhard Beins’s largely textural rather than percussive approach to his kit, especially when Beins makes swishing sounds by gently rubbing one of his drumskins with a block of polystyrene. Beins also plays ‘small electrics’, which merge with Phil Durrant’s software samplers and treatments.
Particularly good examples of the trio’s textural interplay can be heard on Corridor and the pointillistic track that immediately follows it, Dots #1. Running to almost ten minutes, the latter track is one of the lengthiest on the aptly titled Shortcut; most are half that length or less, and the five parts of Piercing, with which the CD begins, total less than four minutes. But even when the trio is working in Webernian miniature there’s nothing insubstantial about the music, it’s robust and emphatic, merely stripped of inessentials. Though ideas are sometimes teased out at length, as on Trespassing, the turnover of events is often surprisingly swift – or perhaps it just seems like that because the music is consistently engaging.
Brian Marley l Signal To Noise l March 2009

2006 SHORTCUT

Trio Sowari - Three Dances

Phil Durrant: software sampler, synthetiser, treatments
Bertrand Denzler: tenor saxophone
Burkhard Beins: percussion, objects

Recorded in November 2004, this debut album by Trio Sowari offers a considerable dose of high-end electro-acoustic improv. Then again, connoisseurs of the genre expect no less from Phil Durrant, Burkhard Beins, and the ubiquitous Bertrand Denzler, whose discography grows as quickly as his stature.
Forget the "dance" paradigm generated by the album and track titles, and the cover artwork -- delightfully kitsch, incidentally. There is nothing to be danced to on this record, not even a single beat. Actually, there might not even be a single stroke, as Beins is much more a brusher and a bower than a striker, when it comes to percussion. Sit this one out and listen instead.
There is a wonderful level of mimicry and intricacy between Denzler's breathy techniques (he rarely plays a note), Durrant's electronics (including a software sampler), and Beinz's textural sounds, especially in the 25-minute Tumble, exquisitely sparse and detailed until everyone locks up in a raspy mood for a grating finale that should leave you speechless. Distinguishing individual contributions gets tricky at times, but the exercise does have its entertaining value. Nevertheless, the album works best when you let go of such considerations, accept the music for the collective effort that it is, and surrender to its troubled imagery and uncanny choreographical aspects. Rondo and Bolero -- respectively 16 and 11 minutes long -- contain very strong moments, but Tumble is the true reason to acquire Three Dances.
François Couture l All Music Guide l August 2005
AllAboutJazz
2004 THREE DANCES

Activity Center - Lohn & Brot

Michael Renkel: acoustic guitar, preparations, amplified stringboard, live electronics, percussion
Burkhard Beins: drums, cymbals, e-bowed and propelled zither, mixing desk, handheld electronics

"the activity center started off in 1989 with a conglomeration of instruments and sound sources at hand, comprising prepared tapes and tape loops, toys and homemade instruments, an inside piano, zither, contact mikes and radio, next to electric and acoustic guitars, and percussion. throughout the 1990's the focus shifted almost exclusively towards the sonic potential of their acoustic main instruments: spanish guitar and percussion extended only by preparations and the use of various objects as documented on their first musical summary möwen & moos, a double cd released in 1999 after the first 10 years of their collaborative artistic development.

another decade on the activity center has been amplified again, extended by electronic software and devices, and relocated on tables. by completing this kind of circle all discoveries they have made so far seem to be now at their disposal. but as a matter of course lohn & brot is once again a transitory piece of work. a hybrid of acoustic noise and electro-acoustic subtlety, immediate manual access and complex treatment. - what will come next ?"-Absinthe Records

2009 LOHN & BROT

Nmperign + Dörner, Beins

Bhob Rainey: soprano saxophone
Greg Kelley: trumpet
Axel Dörner: trumpet
Burkhard Beins: percussion

2002 NMPERIGN + DORNER, BEINS
NMPERIGN INTERVIEWED by stylus magazine

SLW - Fifteen point nine grams

Burkhard Beins: selected percussion, objects
Lucio Capece: soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, preparations
Rhodri Davies: electric harp, electro acoustic devices
Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board

Poutrerie impros cyber-lo-fi analogique

ici