Wildling . Kammerflimmer Kollektief
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staubgold 97
2010. cd . dl . lp
"Wildling" is the trio’s strongest and most vulnerable album to date. It is a solipsist, which floats solitary in its own space, somewhere between the orbits of jazz, krautrock, pop and hell. This space is an earthly heaven, which we are permitted to inhabit – if we only can hear, with our ears as well as our heads.
"Hippie vermin" hisses the bank employee who still thinks of himself as a punk. He’s sitting next to me as we’re watching the Kammerflimmer Kollektief playing. He says it because he doesn’t understand. In fact, he doesn’t understand anything. He sees them play, but he does not listen. I wonder: Does the word "play" suffice? Maybe the members of the Kammerflimmer Kollektief even perform. I am not sure. The presentation is authentic, but it’s still a presentation. You see people, you hear their souls but no one exposes him/herself mindlessly. No one makes a fool of him/herself. No one plays the stick-in-the-mud. No one disengages him/herself. Three people who play music.
Heike Aumüller sits on the floor, making music, singing in a type of English which can only be understood by people who listen. Those who look, who want to see music, do not see anything at all. And they feel nothing. Johannes Frisch fondles his double bass like Kate Bush did in her video to "Babooshka". But while Kate Bush didn’t play, Frisch does while simultaneously playing around with it, winding himself around the instrument – 1-0 for the venerably aged jazzer. On the other side sits Thomas Weber, bent over his guitar, occasionally operating the electronics in front of him, while his other hand is being played by the guitar. Again and again, it drags the other hand towards the instrument – it’s as simple as that. The audience has to want to listen and not only see. Those who can see, see the art of Heike Aumüller which graces the cover. What one sees there is vulnerable and strong at the same time. Anyone who has ever watched a Bruce Willis action movie will know the sentence that Willis – suddenly more than just muscles and smiles – utters to the obligatory child (or woman, anyway, someone to rescue): "Of course I’m afraid."
What do we learn from this? Those who make themselves vulnerable become strong. The Kammerflimmer Kollektief has made itself strong, had made itself strong even before it merged into a band and then as a band, is grew even stronger. And more vulnerable. Where the music used to be beautiful, it now became powerful and momentous. Dietmar Dath speaks the truth when he suggests that one should listen to the music loud – because thus it gains even more depth.
The Kammerflimmer Kollektief is emotive and impassioned. It is also as lucid and precise as those moods which Robert Musil (who is above suspicion of a being a romanticist) called "daylight mysticism". The lyrics and the music want to be heard, they want to be explored, even suffered. Sound builds songs which are made of sounds, and yet they’ re no longer songs.
Kammerflimmer Kollektief
The Kammerflimmer Kollektief plays music, which should not be written down, for it would scorch the paper. The project, whose music meanders between precision and freedom, has been founded in 1996 by Thomas Weber.
Up to now, the Kollektief has released eight albums in all sorts of line-ups. Live performances all over the world are realized as a trio (with Heike Aumüller and Johannes Frisch).