Keith Rowe / Axel Dörner / Franz Hautzinger - A View From The Window

Keith Rowe - guitars, electronics
Franz Hautzinger - slide trumpet
Axel Dörner - quatertone trumpet

Press release from Erstwhile: April 2004

Trumpeters Axel Dörner and Franz Hautzinger transcend many of the aesthetic and geographical factions that have evolved over four decades of European free improv, contributing their gorgeous tones to a wide variety of contexts. On A View From The Window, they join forces with the intensely focused Keith Rowe, one of the sceneÕs founding fathers, and explore the abstract limits of their respective palettes.

RoweÕs history should be familiar to anyone following this area of music. Having mostly performed within AMM until the late nineties, heÕs since been involved in a wide range of projects, including a slew of the most prominent Erstwhile releases. HeÕs the cornerstone musician for the label, and is co-curating the upcoming AMPLIFY festival in Cologne and Berlin, AMPLIFY 2004: addition.

Dörner hails from Cologne, and has been living in Berlin since 1994. He is one of the busiest musicians in the European improv scene, working in projects ranging from free improv ensembles like the Territory Band and The Electrics to more abstract ensembles such as Phosphor and Lines. He recently put out a superb trio disc on Creative Sources with Boris Baltschun and Kai Fagaschinski. This is his second project for Erstwhile, following the self-titled duos with Kevin Drumm, released in 2001.

Hautzinger, based in Vienna, has recorded numerous projects for Grob, including the solo Gomberg, a duo with Derek Bailey, and Absinth (a quartet with Werner Dafeldecker, Sachiko M, and John Tilbury). He has worked with an impressive diversity of musicians, including Gil Evans, John Cale, Christian Fennesz, Otomo Yoshihide, Butch Morris, Phill Niblock, Lou Reed, and the Temptations. This is his first project for Erstwhile.

A View From The Window was recorded in a single day in Vienna in November 2003 by Christoph Amann, superbly as always. The CD captures these three musicians paring their signature sounds down to their essences, with the occasional plaintive trumpet cry or subtle radio snippet emerging from the delicate intertwining. Photojournalist Yuko Zama was in attendance for the sessions, and became drawn to the glimpse of sky visible through one of the studioÕs windows. She took dozens of pictures from different angles, and her fascination inspired Rowe to title the record after the Cardew quote (see below), and to paint a more 'optimistic' version of one of her photos for the front cover.

"...it is impossible to record with any fidelity a kind of music that is actually derived from the room in which it is taking place - its size, shape, acoustical properties, even the view from the window..." - Cornelius Cardew, Towards an Ethic of Improvisation

Here

Keith Rowe, Toshimaru Nakamura, Thomas Lehn, Marcus Schmickler - ErstLive 002

Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics
Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board
Thomas Lehn: analog synthesizer
Marcus Schmickler: synthesizer, computer

Review

by Brian Olewnick

As a trio, Keith Rowe, Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler had been responsible for the fine and raucous Rabbit Run as well as a set on the AMPLIFY 2002: balance edition, both also on Erstwhile. Most of the former and much of the latter were characterized by a rough-and-tumble approach that verged on the brutal, further enhanced on Rabbit Run by the division of the performance into random slices and the advice to the listener to play the disc on shuffle mode. Injecting Toshimaru Nakamura into this mix, he of the no-input mixing board, was like adding a leavening agent into a stew threatening to boil over its cauldron. And indeed, from the first sound, the agitation level is on low flame in this live session, hums and staticky drones predominant. The blend of instruments is intriguing: Lehn's analog synthesizer and Schmickler's computer present two subtly different poles while, perpendicularly, Nakamura's sine-like tones of alien purity intersect with Rowe's rougher-edged attacks on his guitar spiced with several harsh radio samples (including snatches of the Who's "Happy Jack"). The music unfurls in petal-like fashion, not with particular forward thrust but revealing unusual and fascinating vistas, pausing briefly for contemplation and then moving on. Not that things don't turn rambunctious on occasion; rude noises bubble to the surface several times, but always underlined by a steady flow of sound in one form or another, a linear component that keeps the music from any appearance of disjointedness. It's a slippery journey, but by performance's end, the listener has traversed an extremely wide and open sound-field, one that's worth revisiting many, many times not the least because it will be heard differently every on each occasion.

2004 ERSTLIVE 002 (rapidshare/mediafire)

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)

Keith Rowe, Martin Küchen, Seymour Wright

Keith Rowe: electric guitar
Martin Küchen: alto saxophone
Seymour Wright: alto saxophone

The dual alto saxophones of Martin Kuchen and Seymour Wright meet guitarist Keith Rowe for an impressive journey of free improvisation with Rowe generally taking the lead. The pieces are sparse, building in ebb and flow, with both saxophonists using extended techniques and the action of the instrument intself to create a quilt of timbre, buzz and sound. The single long improvisation is beautifully paced to create an aura of mystery, building implicit chapters in extended passages of flowing abstraction.

2010 ROWE/KÜCHEN/WRIGHT

Evan Parker & Keith Rowe - Dark Rags

Evan Parker: tenor saxophone
Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics

Review

by Steven Loewy

This is not the first time Evan Parker and Keith Rowe have recorded together, but what makes these two lengthy live improvisations so compelling is the seamless and almost uncanny way in which the musicians meld their creative concepts. Rowe is a surprisingly effective partner for the more aggressive Parker, as the former lays down alternatively minimalist and complex layers of electronic fabric that the saxophonist integrates in his blowing. There is always a sense of equal pairing, of smorgasbords of ambient clouds rising up in swirls of interlocking embraces. Curiously, neither of the tracks ever grows tedious, even though both hover at the 40-minute mark, and there is a certain static quality throughout. This is utterly fascinating fare, with Rowe's low-key electronics occasionally adding humor, and Parker adjusting his sometimes frenetic style by lowering the volume and bouncing delicately off the manipulated noises. Somehow, Rowe brings out qualities in the saxophonist's playing that are not usually heard; the results are often thrilling.

2000 DARK RAGS

MIMEO with John Tilbury - The Hands of Caravaggio

MIMEO:
Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics
Kevin Drumm: guitar, analogue synth
Phil Durrant: software granuler samplers & treatments
Thomas Lehn: analogue synthetizer
Kaffe Matthews: computer
Jérôme Noetinger: electroacoustic devices
Gert-Jan Prins: electronics, FM modulations, radio
Peter Rehberg: computer
Marcus Schmickler: digital synthetiser, computer
Rafael Toral: guitar with analogue modular system
Markus Wettstein: amplified metal garbage
Cor Fuhler: inside piano
John Tilbury: piano

2002 THE HANDS OF CARAVAGGIO
Review

Keith Rowe, Julien Ottavi, Will Guthrie, Manu Leduc

Keith Rowe: radio electronics
Julien Ottavi: radio computer
Will Guthrie: radio mixed media
Manu Leduc: radio mixed electronics

2004 November Quebec
Liner notes