Four years after the first
Polwechsel date comes its sequel, with saxophone horseman of the apocalypse
John Butcher replacing trombonist Radu Malfatti. This time out Werner Dafeldecker (Daffy Ducker?) brings his precise explorations of atonality and noise to only two of the proceedings, with one by cellist Michael Moser and a group improvisation to end the album.
Butcher's alto and soprano add much to the sound of
Polwechsel. He may not have as many sounds as
Evan Parker, but when treated by Dafeldecker's electronic manipulations, they come off as elongated, bell-less foghorns in places. Also, when
Butcher turns the timbral jets on, he pulls a
Pharoah Sanders trick and plays for long periods from the inside of the horn. But it is the varying sonorities of the electric guitars that lend these proceedings their weight -- at least on "Hyogo" and "Toaster," whose spacious areas of subtle fragmentary noise is interrupted only by the flow of distorted, tuneless guitars and a sustained note from either Moser or
Butcher. Moser's "Tatoo" (sic) is by far the most interesting work here in that it uses acoustic instruments, un-manipulated by anything but the performers playing them. Cellos become percussion instruments with bows, guitars become harps or thump pianos, basses become horns, and horns become conical corridors of rhythmic air juxtaposing the asymmetrical beat consciousness of the rest of the pack. The understated intensity of "Falb," the group improv, is what keeps the rest of the album from sheer ponderousness. There is something truly menacing about the way
Butcher gargles and gurgles through his saxophones and Dafeldecker answers on the double bass. As microtones appear, resonate, and waft away like specters into the anti-body of the tune, more ghostly presences with perhaps fearful intent impose themselves upon the spacey, droning spherical mode. The fact that there is no resolution to any of this and the improvisation just collapses into itself before disappearing is very unsettling. This is a disturbing ending to an already alien musical conception. Over four years the sound of
Polwechsel hasn't become any easier to hear for those not interested in the subtle extremes of texture and noise. ~ Thom Jurek