Label: thanatosis produktion

Chris Watsonと共演していた名プレイヤーMartin Kuchenの新録!!1990年代半ばからスウェーデンの即興/フリージャズシーンで活躍、Mats Gustafsson率いる"Fire! Orchestra"や"Trondheim Jazz Orchestra"など超大所帯集団に数多く参加し自らも作曲活動を行うMartin Kuchen。パリの前衛/即興ピアニストSophie Agnelとの2023年共作をリリース。プリペアドピアノより放たれる金属質の点描音響と雑音、ソプラノサックスとの融合はノイジーなサウンドスケープ的趣き。メチャクチャ良いです。





"Having expectations and then being pleasantly disabused of those expectations.

In my experience listening to the music of both Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel, I’ve often detected what I perceive to be a (sometimes hidden) strain of romanticism, a deep and dark vaguely lyrical content that one doesn’t routinely identify with free improvisers. With Küchen, this could be heard most prominently in his solo recordings such as ‘The Lie and the Orphanage’ (Mathka, 2010) or ‘Hellstorm’ (Mathka, 2012). I had also heard Agnel give a memorable solo piano recital in Västerås, Sweden in 2012 where the closest comparison I could think of (not really that close) was to some of the music of Fredric Rzewski. So I came into this release with some of those expectations in mind.

But no. Instead we have four pieces, each one a quiet, even delicate exploration of sound, combining gently probing piano passages, including relatively fragile sounds from within the instrument to soft, if perhaps forlorn and even strangulated moans from the reeds. The soundscape created is sparse in one sense but really quite well populated with “small”, beautifully related objects, bits that reflect off of one another in a manner that implies seriously deep listening on the part of both musicians. A lovely, thoughtful set all around, one that happily upset my expectations."