Kammerflimmer Kollektief

Kammerflimmer Kollektief is a German collective led by Thomas Weber, a member of the Payola collective that also includes Tied & Tickled Trio, Notwist and Village of Savoonga.

The instrumental album Maander (Payola, 1999), that collects the first two EPs by Weber alone, is a meandering collection of barely sketched ideas. Mond? sounds like a minimalist Brian Eno forgoing the piano for loops of samples and syncopated electronic beats. Likewise, Tuch evokes Jon Hassell's fourth-world music with the addition of atonal guitar and swampy beat. The rest runs the gamut from the loud and dizzying charleston dance Implodiert to the Afro-tribal Lunger via the romantic and folksy Gras. Weber pushes the limits of his digital soundsculpting with the massive distortion that obliterates the Cuban tom-tom in Faller, and drops occasional echoes of the old German prog-rock of of Can and Neu in pieces like Konstant. He is at his best when he brings out the visceral aspects of the genres that he revisits.

The project became a six-piece collective on Incommunicado (Payola, 2000): Weber on guitar, Dietrich Foth on saxophone, Heike Wendelin on violin, Anne Vortisch on synth, Johannes Frisch on bass and Michael Stroeder on drums. After the dense free-jazz paste of Nachtwach, they engage in a 13-minute jam, Gras, whose dissonant and repetitive opening quickly decays in a lengthy and downcast decomposition of collective improvvisation. Rand is the exact opposite: a volcanic explosion of collective noise. After a cover of Robert Wyatt's 1992 song Venti Latir, they indulge in the ominous drones of Kissen and close with 45 seconds of violin noise, Holler. All in all, a minor, transitional, work.

More austere and elegant, the brief album Hysteria (Temporary Residence Limited, 2001) is three albums in one. On one hand, alien glitches ripple the repeated melodic chords of Hysteria and alien drones shape the sinister atmosphere of Engel Wacht. This is a relatively user-friendly album. On the other hand, Seen Not Seen seems to covertly bridge a Scottish fanfare with a vibrant blues jam before erupting in free jazz, and Auguri Auguri is a crescendo of noises that interact and interfere. This is a brainy avantgarde album. The highlights are the folksy, enchanted, minimalist lullaby Du Siehst Hoch Du Siehst Wolken and the elastic blues lamentation Mohn, which belongs to another album yet. The reissue adds a 13-minute version of Du Siehst Hoch Du Siehst Wolken. The group achieves a form of evocative glitch-rock that could be the equivalent of the old ECM jazz-rock for the new century.

The playful Cicadidae (Temporary Residence, 2003) was generally less serious, but actually furthered the merging of post-rock, droning ambient, "intelligent" techno, digital collage and free jazz, just in a more user-friendly format. Neumond Inselhin is a hybrid of glitchy dance music and atmospheric new-age music. Ueber Die Wasserscheide evokes somnolent cinematic noir jazz. Sie Tranken Regen is slow and mournful like a requiem. Eiderdaunen is a pastoral march in a landscape of cicadas. Irgendwann - Fruehling deconstructs nocturnal lounge jazz. The beat of standout Mantra reinvents the meaning of "swinging". A dreamy mood envelops the proceedings. A bit of the old anarchy surfaces in the epileptic Denn Nacht Ist Jetzt Schon Bald, another highlight precisely because it steers clear of atmospheric muzak.

That redirection resulted in the more organic, balanced and elegant (and sometimes bleak) compounds of Absencen (Staubgold, 2005). The glacial Lichterloh is born almost exactly at the intersection of minimalist repetition, easy-listening languor and free-jazz mayhem. The eight-minute Die Voegel Sangen Draussen Ihre Ungereimte Melodie is instead a project to disassemble the unity of those genres: a loose aggregate of chirping violin and saxophone, disjointed drumming, piercing drones and tenuous organ notes. The suspense and tension of Nachtwache 15 September is generated by a conflation of unresolved symphonic phrases and free-form percussion. The calm watery soundscape of Equilibrium, the stately threnody of Unstet (for Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce), the tropical jazzy fanfare of Shibboleth are different faces of the same inscrutable moon.

Jinx (Staubgold, 2007), recorded by the trio of Thomas Weber (guitar and keyboards), Heike Aumueller (harmonium, vocals, synth) and Johannes Frisch (double bass and percussion), has abandoned any pretense of minimalism or glitch avantgarde and even the digital beats of techno, and instead settles for evocative and atmospheric music. The desert-evoking country-rock shuffle Palimpsest could be Calexico. Live At The Cactus Tree Motel is a gentle waltzing fanfare. Gammler Zen & Hohe Berge enters Ennio Morricone territory. The vocals of Heike Aumuller breath life into the monolithic Both Eyes Tight Shut, and they haunt Jinx like a ghost of witch Diamanda Galas with Jim Steinman on piano. The eleven-minute Subnarkotisch enters another dimension, floating in a droning and hissing substance that releases a chorus of noise in an apocalyptic crescendo.

Then came Im Erwachten Garten (2008), a collaboration with novelist Dietmar Dath who reads from one of his novels, Wildling (recorded between 2007 and 2009), containing the 13-minute In Transition, that harks back to the prog-rock suites of the 1970s, Teufelskamin (recorded between september 2010 and june 2011), containing the ten-minute jam of virulent post-jazz Teufelskamin Jam #1 and the nine-minute distorted threnody New Ghosts, Farnschiffe (2012), another collaboration with Dietmar Dath credited to Schwarzenbach, Desarroi (recorded between 2013 and 2014), a set of psychedelic and cacophonous freak-outs (including the one titled Free Form Freak-Out, which is actually the brainy one, and the hypnotic Burned), and There Are Actions Which We Have Neglected And Which Never Cease To Call Us (Bureau B, 2018), containing the ten-minute fantasia Lucid Imperial Beach.

Kammerflimmer Kollektief's 12th album Schemen (recorded from may 2018 to july 2022) featured Johannes Frisch (double bass), Christopher Brunner (drums), Thomas Weber (electric guitar), and Heike Aumuller (harmonium and synthesizer). It's a work torn between extremes, between the eight-minute psychedelic jam Erstes Kapitel (closer in spirit to Maquiladora than to their early albums) and the eight-minute chaotic cacophony of Zweites Kapitel.