Thomas Lehn & Paul Lovens - Achtung

Thomas Lehn: analogue synthesizer
Paul Lovens: selected & unselected drums and cymbals, singing saw

This special duo constellation rests in this freedom of cliches. Although the music is occasionally incredibly dense and present, it can hardly be fixed. Is it energy powerplay? Finely linked sound research? Post Free Jazz? English School? Is that a kind of duet for percussion instruments? Or electro-acoustic music par excellence? Is it what one expects? Or something completely different?
Lehn and Lovens know, in any case, how to surprise us-in the logical sense of the word! Because, when someone suddenly calls out "Achtung!" [Look out!] that doesn't mean by a long shot that we are prepared for what will come.

2000 ACHTUNG (GROB) mediafire/rapidshare

Johannes Bauer / Thomas Lehn / Jon Rose - Futch

Johannes Bauer: trombone
Thomas Lehn: analogue synthesizer
Jon Rose: violin, electronics

There are several things that seem impossible about the Fucht trio. Their mesh of instruments — Conrad Bauer's trombone, Thomas Lehn's analogue synthesizer, Rose's violin and electronics — is an unlikely amalgamation, fat in the midrange and, with neither frets nor valves, ripe with slippery indeterminacy. The players, too, are an unlikely combination: Rose is a tireless conceptualist, making music out of political borders and rewriting economics and history like a viol-centric Marco Polo. While Bauer played previously with Rose in the Slawterhouse quartet, he is better known in adventurous jazz realms, having played with Peter Brötzmann, Barry Guy, Ken Vandermark and Alan Silva. Lehn can usually be found in the hotter end of less idiomatic free improv with John Butcher, Cor Fuehler and the group Konk Pack. The name they've chosen for themselves, German for "gone" or "spoiled" suggests something about their group work, although it might just as much be misleading.

But what is most unlikely about their disc, recorded over two sessions in 2006, is how impossibly close all the sounds are. The album drills maddeningly into the brain from the first moments. There is no background here, no comping or accompaniment, no division of duties. They could almost have been a proper trio: Lehn's ever mutating pops and whistles are generally percussive; Bauer could have fallen easily into a bass register; Rose might have chosen to play the melody lead like a voice or saxophone. But that, presumably, would have been going too easy on the unsuspecting listener.

Instead they frenetically circle and burrow, creating a new sonic situation every few seconds, working, it seems, inches from the listener's ears. They are working together, constantly picking up on suggestions from each other but never falling into formation. They create musical fragments only to ignore or destroy them. Futch is restless, relentless, occasionally hilarious and always commanding of attention. The bold will use headphones.(from TheSquid'sEar)

2006 FUTCH (Jazwerkstatt) rapidshare/mediafire

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)

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

Artifact iTi - Artifact: iTi Live in St Johann

Ken Vandermark - reeds
Johannes Bauer - trombone
Thomas Lehn - analogue synthesizer
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums

2010 ARTIFACT: ITI LIVE IN ST JOHANN

Bertrand Gauguet, Franz Hautzinger, Thomas Lehn - close up

Bertrand Gauguet: sax
Franz Hautzinger: trompet, electronics
Thomas Lehn: electronics

Free electroacoustic stuff, oscillations, permutations, sons divers, étranges, continu, interrompu. Indifférenciation, analogique, numérique. Signal sonore, frottement, crissement. Espace, temps. Géométrie, hasard. Courbes, racine carrée, intégrale, asymptote, hyperbole. Racine de pie sur un sinusoïde.

ici