ALFRED HARTH - NUN (O BACK CD,Selfrelease)


New music collectors must be having a hard time keeping track of the constantly changing vision of Alfred 23 Harth, whose career is now approaching its fifth decade and still showing no sign of "stagnation". Harth has played with virtually everybody, although he's best known for his work with Cassiber and his contribution to Lindsay Cooper's Oh Moscow, and his own music is a fertile ground where jazz, improvisation, techno and acousmatics rub shoulders, often with stunning results, enriched by the mind-boggling reed technique that's made him one of the most inventive and recognizable saxophone / clarinet players on the planet. For several years now this German utopian has been living in South Korea, where, besides collaborating with the best local talents and joining Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra, he's produced a sizeable body of work in very limited, often "print-on-demand" CDR editions: go to alfredharth.de for direct inquiries. His "Mother Of Pearl" albums are characterized by gorgeous artwork and (it goes without saying) magnificent music, and these two titles are a perfect testament, concluding the series.

Nun, explains the author, is a one-word poem with multiple meanings (including "eye" and "snow" in Korean). Harth applies a precise choice of subjects, times and past collaborators in what, like Seoul Milk, is a multilayered, undefinable work whose aesthetic is unquestionably and thoroughly "23". "Dog", based on a short poem by Yun Dong-Ju, is high-level electroacoustic chemistry, a soundworld mixing fragments of compositions dating from 1967 and 1984 as well as current sources and Harth's own lines. "For Taran" is a monstrous bass clarinet solo (dedicated to Taran Singh "who runs a free jazz program broadcast in France"), a virtuoso reminder of how good Harth is at improvising for long stretches without ever sounding pretentious or boring. "Bref", recorded in 1998 in Frankfurt and featuring Micha Daniels, is another specimen of surreal anarchy on which guitar, mandola and percussion form strange patchworks with a deranged primordial drum machine and a delirious Farfisa organ, reaching its apex in a strident bagpipe solo (a mizmar, I guess from the notes) over a psychedelic background. After "Test for Tokyo", a "percussive and dirty" solo for sax, contact microphones and Kaoss pad, Harth gives us the dulcis in fundo treatment with "Leasing a Straw Hut" and especially "108". Both pieces are surrounded by an ominous aura, their complex development built on masterful juxtapositions of reeds and excerpts from past projects. "Leasing", like "Dog", is based on a poem, this time by Yi Kyu-Bo and features the sound of the sea from Hakdong on the South Korean island of Namhae, while "108", named after the "108 grievous and troubled thoughts counted by the Buddhists in order to become aware of and finally get over them", is a stirring potion reverberating with (involuntary?) echoes of Roland Kayn. This menacing dark current brings Nun to an end, and though it's a disheartening way to go out, you do so safe in the knowledge that you've experienced artistry of the highest order.

In Paris Transatlantic


ALFRED HARTH - Seoul Milk (Slowalk)


Seoul Milk dates from between 2002 and 2005 and is subtitled "a sonic bouquet of Seoul broadcast all the way to Europe". Its three movements present a paradoxically well-conceived, ordered chaos of shortwave radios and TV sets emitting kaleidoscopic signals that mesh with fragmented drum machine patterns and flanged vocals from the streets, as Harth's assemblage follows the convulsive evolutions of his individual sources, which include folk songs, children's voices, creaking metal, subsonic pulse, snippets of languid pop songs and a vision of downtown hell. Imagine a Korean version of a souk; the local male voices captured by Harth sound like disguised muezzins. The third and final section fuses all the different perspectives into a disjointed, oscillating quasi-disco pattern leading up to the ironic ending, culled from the opening ceremony of the 2002 World Cup, all pompous music and official announcements, wiping out the remnants of our cerebral comfort. If you enjoyed Jess Rowland's Scenes From The Silent Revolution on Pax Recordings you'll love this too.


In Paris Transatlantic

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VLADIMIR ESTRAGON - Three quarks for Muster Mark (TIPTOE)

Vladimir Estragon in Wikipedia


I maintain that internet is the best thing that could have happened to me in the last 15 years. If I still depended on the idiocy of record shops' personnel (who, at least on these shores, declare "out of print" everything they don't know - 95% of things - and when they miraculously have something difficult to obtain try to charge you twice the prices you'll see after a 10-minute search on the web) I'd have had a hard time discovering an album like this, an unnoticed, unsung treasure trove of good ideas, lively irony and astonishing artistry. Consisting of Alfred Harth (tenor sax and clarinets), Phil Minton (voice and trumpet), F.M. Einheit (metals and electronics) and the excellent Ulrike Haage (keyboards, sequencer programming and samples), Vladimir Estragon were a paradise of lusty electronic arrangements whose preset-derived poetry was poisoned by oblique complexities and sudden animations entering the picture when less expected; and this is only a fraction of the whole. Minton's typical parades of vocal characters depict a series of alternative abnormalities, as he accompanies absurd harmonic sequences with nonchalant schizophreny, often meshing his garbled glottology with the less consonant fruits from the rest of the group. And what about Harth's immediately recognizable, charming-but-challenging lines? Be it in a profound duo with Haage's piano (like in the initial "The warten") or leading a double-edge thematic exposition together with Minton's fiery trumpet, his playing remains connected with something that words can't give justice to, and that I can only define as "lyrically corporeal". Given Einheit's slightly more obscure role - but his duet with Minton in "Der verbleibende Haufen" is great - a special mention goes to Ulrike Haage, who composed the large part of the material with Harth; her programming sapience is a strong point of the disc, constituting an entertaining springboard for all members to unveil their more disguised influences; she also plays a mean piano and writes in styles that respectfully nod to Lars Hollmer and Lindsay Cooper, with an additional touch of tangential sweetness. Look for "Three quarks" with all your browsing power (better still, click on the above link), as this gem was released in 1989 and - unless they're using it as a gap filler somewhere - your "friends" at the record shop will probably tell you that it never existed.

In Touching Extremes



HEINER GOEBBELS / ALFRED HARTH - Hommage/Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler (FMP) - Vom Sprengen des Gartens (FMP)




We're in the middle of the seventies, punk and new wave thoroughly dominate the music world. Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth couldn't care less, though; their own time capsule contains the germs of true evolution and such a process cannot occur without an accurate study of the past. "Hommage" is just that: a tribute to Hanns Eisler through heartfelt versions of some of his songs and pieces, plus duo compositions that graciously nod to the great German artist. The album was recorded live in Berlin but luckily the audience is completely mixed out; we can thus enjoy robust doses of bloody virtuosity balanced by the peculiar mixture of modern and retro typical of Goebbels and Harth, a distinct trait that can be counted among the basic influences of many groups belonging to the Rock In Opposition area. "Vom Sprengen des Gartens" came out in 1979 and, from this receiver's spiritual point of observation, is a little more complex. In it, the two companions find many ways of exploring profound emotions with a preference towards an introspective melancholy, like in the intensely pensive "Almelo" on side B. Eisler is still revered, but there's also some Bach, Schumann and a gorgeous rendition of Rameau's "Le rappel des oiseaux". Both albums constitute a fulgid example of how respectfully music, whatever the genre, should always be treated. The enormous multi-instrumentalist abilities of both men (Goebbels a fantastic pianist and accordionist doubling on reeds, Harth a monster sax and clarinet player) are never used as an excuse for meaningless boring exercises. Offering coherent richness of expressive means and abundance of stirring playing, these two FMP releases should be regarded as milestones, while instead are criminally overlooked. Here's my hope of a fully detailed reissue of Goebbels and Harth's opera omnia - no compilations, please, we want them all and COMPLETE. Meanwhile, spend some eBay dollar on these two; I'll be returning soon to talk about the rest of this pair's production.

In Touching Extremes

Mr.Ricci's friendly wish had been fulfilled in 2007: a reissue of the two first Lps by the "Duo Goebbels/Harth" was released on Recommended Records,London.

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Akupunktur in Gruen (Laubhuette Production 03)

ALFRED HARTH


Never try to find a kinship with something else when dealing with Alfred Harth's music. This intriguing collection is a collage that spoons us up with continuous remissions of definitions, homemade low-budget sophistries, semi-accessible metaphores and unpredictable pot-pourris. Maimed drum'n'bass patterns hide intertwining lines of muted trumpet, sax and clarinet, the whole surrounded by environmental euphemisms where loops of ceremonial singing and male voices filtered by dictaphones mix with synthetic evacuations of the mind. A fixed pattern of "one-chord-plus-drum machine" can reveal a whole mainland of sampling hazardousness (you gotta love those short glissando brass...) while threatening growls from the urban underworld are morphed into distant echoes of just apparent contradictions. What's to be appreciated more than anything else is the absolute lack of self-aggrandizement that this artist brings to the table; take it or leave it, these are a few of his many facets and this complex vision finds us wordless in a desert of interpretations. Harth illegitimates the remains of muzak's grime by juxtaposing singing monks and commonplaces: hear for yourself the difference with what today is peddled as "spiritually evolved". This music touches many points and connects them all with a single stroke, affecting our opinions about sound placement and teaching us how to affirm our independence from the imperial vulgarity we've grown subjected to.

In Touching Extremes
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Achter Atem (Laubhuette Production 02)

ALFRED HARTH / KANG TAE HWAN


"Seven breath", an album by Korean saxophonist Kang Tae Hwan, is the only source for this remix work by Harth, who used exclusively sounds from Kang's alto sax to conceive a kind of aural network which works at various levels of efficiency. Is this a soundtrack for a series of hallucinations? A new kind of ectoplasmic minimalism? For sure, the different plans upon which the German artist lays his perspectives of creative modification are an involuntary example of "static conceptual movement", a paradox in definition but not far from what we concretely hear. Droning loops constitute a sort of parallel authority that hosts long melodic phrases spreading their wings in infinite reverberations, while snippets of gorgeous tone are ruminated and re-distributed within structures whose limits are only designed by our disposition in that very moment. The flanging echoes and unstable oscillations utilized by Harth for the large part of the tracks represent the immunity from boredom, colouring the music with a sense of impendence which is "Achter Atem"'s strongest asset.

In Touching Extremes
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