no furniture | cs009

«No Furniture» è senza ombra di dubbio un disco 'tedesco' in tutta la sua essenza. Lo s'intuisce, non solo nell'osservare le parti coinvolte, tutti artisti germanici, ma dall'assetto compositivo che gli scorre dentro. Il modus operandi, che sembra aver piantato le radici tra il circolo impro della zona, è direzionato in una proposizione sonora dai toni forti, aspri, rigidi, spigolosi, essenziali... spartani.
Una peculiarità della scena germanica è nel prediligere una costruzione degli eventi seguendo una logica matematica. Bisogna denudare la singola nota dall'uso comune cui viene associata (mi riferisco all'equazione musica = melodia) e (ri)adattarla dentro un habitat primitivo.
Queste varie premesse vanno a diventare un'unica carta d'identità dei tre musicisti firmatari dell'opera. E dunque, esce per la portoghese Creative Sources l'ambizioso melange tra Axel Dörner (tromba e computer), Boris Baltschun (sampler) e Kai Fagaschinski (clarinetto). Come detto, lasciarsi coinvolgere a pieno dai complessi interscambi dei tre non è un'esperienza facile e, diciamo pure, tra le più soavi. Tra l'altro comincia ad essere difficoltoso descrivere in parole chiare e originali ogni nuova proposta. E' netta la sensazione di ripetersi, quasi come girare senza fermarsi mai attorno allo stesso punto. Cosa (ri)dire se non che continua imperterrito (con risultati altalenanti tra il positivo e il negativo) lo studio della trasposizione da suoni ortodossi a geometrie prive d'ogni riferimento stabile e preciso. Le note tecniche c'impongono di segnalare diverse cose. Primo: il soffio di Dörner alla cornetta riesce a emanare, come sempre, un profondo senso viscerale. Il suo ego dirompente, anche se sfiora stati d’animo silenti, rende la presenza di Fagaschinski minuta e invisibile. Baltschun, con un'estetica del suono vicina ai materiali di Peter Ablinger, riesce ad apportare una, seppur minima, variazione di colore in alcuni frangenti. Un disco 'pulito', e appunto geometrico, che dopo qualche ascolto, però, rischia di finire negli scaffali impolverati a far compagnia alla miriade di altri suoi simili. Credo che bisognerebbe seriamente cominciare a porsi delle domande del tipo:
cosa significa oggi giorno fare avanguardia?
Bisogna, a tutti i costi, stupire sondando territori impervi e di difficile accessibilità?
O, meglio ancora, significa ciò sorpassare le barriere della banalità?
Sarà… vedremo... attenderemo...
Comunque una cosa è certa: in questo preciso momento nei miei ascolti ho preferito aver incontrato alcuni di loro accompagnare a turno l'originale voce di Margaret Kammerer in modo più semplice e meno artefatto. Sergio Eletto (Sands-Zine)

«No Furniture» unites three young german musicians, who all have there base in Berlin on a cd released by the portuguese label Creative Sources. Baltschun (1974) studied composition and electronic music in The Hague (Netherlands). Worked and works with people like Dror Feiler, Günter Christmann, Conny Bauer and Wolfgang Fuchs. Composer and clarinetplayer Kai Fagaschinski (1974) is focused on the musicality of noise phenomena. His many collaboartions include a quartet with Burkhard Beins (percussion), Serge Baghdassarians (electric guitar) and Boris Baltschun (sampler), and very recent a duo work with guitarist Michael Renkel ('Rebecca'). Axel Dörner (1964) studied trumpet subsequently in Arnhem (Netherlands) and Cologne. Originally he stayed in Cologne, but his activities increased whem he moved to Berlin in 1994. To name a few: Robert Rutman, Annette Krebs, Butch Morris, Jim Denley and so on. Berlin is also the place where they recorded «No Furniture» between november 2002 and oktober 2003. So they worked steady on a first sign of life, since their start in 2001. No idea why it is relased on Creative Sources, but it's evident that this trio has a familiar approach to improvised music as the circle around Ernesto Rodrigues. That's to say these improvisors have there main interest in soundresearch and texture. The clarinet produces long, clean notes. The trumpet sputters and grumbles. The sample makes all kinds of noisy excursions. How abstract the music may be, the 'titles' are very basic, simple and represented pictographic: 'Chair', 'Table' and 'Bed'. They chose for duration of sounds so that they get a real 'body' and can make a strong impression on the listener. Dolf Mulder (Vital Weekly)

Muito se tem dito e escrito sobre a utilização do silêncio nas novas tendências da improvisação livre, assim escamoteando um factor que reputo tão essencial, nas orientações estéticas abraçadas pelo chamado “reducionismo”, quanto a definitiva aplicação dos princípios anunciados por John Cage: a importância do microfone e da amplificação, revelando um mundo sonoro microscópico, interior, que antes passava despercebido e parece estar a continuar os preceitos de outro grande nome da história não oficial da música: Giacinto Scelsi. Deste ponto de vista é, aliás, muito curioso o que se está a passar com os improvisadores,aproximando-os das preocupações de sempre da música concreta - com maior evidência quando se utiliza a electrónica ou gravações de campo, mas mais esclarecedoramente ainda quando as fontes sonoras são os instrumentos acústicos tradicionais. Nunca como agora, de facto, foi possível falar com tanta propriedade de abordagens concretistas da música instrumental, que é o que fazem Axel Dörner com o trompete, Kai Fagaschinski com o clarinete ou Boris Baltschun com a electrónica. E se «No Forniture», do trio atrás referido, inclui sampler e computador, é para ainda mais desvirtuar as naturezas e a cultura convencionada dos instrumentos participantes. Estética do silêncio? Oiça-se a incrível e esmagadora presença do trompete de Dörner - é como se estivéssemos dentro dele, e não diante (seja diante dos altifalantes, quando se ouve o disco em casa, como dos performers, em situação de concerto), ao contrário do que vem sucedendo até agora. Depois deste tipo de propostas, há questões que terão de ser repensadas, como o lugar do ouvinte face ao performer ou os próprios mecanismos da percepção musical.... Rui Eduardo Paes (JL)

   Una stanza vuota è il paradigma di una tabula rasa: il vuoto capace di generare angoscia e di creare pazzia. Forse la semplice mancanza di mobilia non determina "il vuoto", ma semplicemente una mancanza: sicuramente la mancanza di una forma (a parte le angolari pareti bianche) e di mille funzionalità a noi famigliari. E, a partire dall'idea di vuoto, ci si può ricondurre alla più totale radicalità per riempire senza il ben che minimo determinismo quella totale (o quasi) mancanza di forma. 
Un trio berlinese concreto-sperimentale prova a riempire quegli spazi attraverso un disinibito utilizzo della materia sonora che si dipana a partire da campionatori e computer che, a loro volta, manipolano in maniera brutalemente informale suoni concreti (Boris Baltshun), una tromba (Axel Dörner) e un clarinetto (Kai Fagaschinski). Disturbi, interferenze, grezze dimensioni generative, tormentati paesaggi industriali dipingono un quadro sonoro che potrebbe ben rappresentare quelle onde elettromagnetiche che invisibili attraversano le nostre stanze, ma indicano al tempo stesso una strada su cui sembra difficile trovare la via del ritorno. Da Pierre Schaeffer all'azzeramento elettronico. Michele Coralli (Altremusiche)

«No Furniture», created with sampler, computer, trumpet and clarinet, is a composition exuding intelligence. One can't gauge its value simply stating "I like/I don't"; you just have to incline your sense of perception that necessary bit in order to experiment a powerful meltdown on yourself. The sounds generated by Baltschun, Dörner and Fagaschinski seem to have an ocular quality, like they were able to determine where YOU - as the listener - must stand and not viceversa; their total polivalence is the result of a pretty unique timbral research, even in this crowded field of "avant art". The musicians are sound-engineering daydreamers, transforming ditchwaters into a sparkling farewell to normality; amalgamators of endangered ideas, they escape hermetisms keeping the same intensity level of a moving-coil mechanism. This music's repassage through exhaustive analysis will guarantee its place among the most innovative exhibitions of indeterminate mastery...yes, because at the end of the day I still don't know to decipher and define the complex modules that form «No Furniture»'s skeleton. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

«No Furniture» is the eponymous debut release by a Berlin-based trio consisting of Boris Baltschun (sampler), Axel Dörner (computer and trumpet) and Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet). The presence of Dörner and Fagaschinski might lead one to expect the type of ultra-quiet exploration of skeletal structures and isolated granular tones stereotypically associated with so-called ‘Berlin Reductionism’. But even expectations better founded than this can be misleading: far from being delicate and diaphanous, the music on «No Furniture» is raw, vibrant, energetic, volatile and frequently rather loud. Baltschun and Dörner’s electronics are very much to the front. Deep subterranean pulsations, monolithic roars, visceral scrapes, and an array of crackles, hisses, high-pitched swarms, etc., move across the soundscape, sometimes coalescing into extended passages of sustained and urgent intensity, often mutating rapidly in complex involutions and collocations, and occasionally dropping into abrupt calm. Aside from a few quieter passages, Dörner’s trumpet and Fagaschinski’s clarinet tend to work from the margins of the group’s sound, curling microtonal tendrils and breathy exclamations around and across the digital streams. Nonetheless, their contributions are integral components of «No Furniture»’s richly multifaceted sound. 
The experience of following «No Furniture»’s vertiginous exploration of a multitude of different dynamics, sounds and moods is an exhilarating one. In principle, electronics open up the possibility of stepping far beyond the limitations of conventional musical instruments and scales. «No Furniture» make effective use of this potential, harnessing it not to a spirit of arid experimentalism but rather to an abundance of musical ideas and enthusiasm. In general, the group’s fecundity of imagination offers a refreshing change from the paralysis and painfully extended monomaniac exploration of single, thin ideas and sounds too often committed to CD and mistaken for profundity. It illustrates what can ensue when the array of advanced ideas and techniques pursued in Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo and elsewhere are taken as elements of a widened musical palette rather than as prescriptions for a uniform, mandatory and quasi-sacred minimalism. In short, «No Furniture» is an excellent recording, perhaps the best example of electro-acoustic music yet to have emerged from the community of advanced musicians in Berlin. Considered along with «Cesura», it also testifies to the expanding range and burgeoning importance of the Lisbon-based Creative Sources label. Wayne Spencer (Paris Transatlantic)

Dos nuevas entregas de este magnífico sello portugues que bien pueden satisfacer a los amantes de la libreimprovisación en su derivación ambient minimal berlinesa. El primero de ellos nos presenta una propuesta de los Rodrigues, “los amos de la burra” mientras el segundo nos ofrece a popes de la escena “madre”.
Por su parte, «No Furniture» es uno de los discos de esta onda que con más agrado he escuchado en los últimos tiempos, quizá porque lejos de ciertas abstracciones, no es tan minimal y su discurso tiende a la fluidez en una interacción que queda bien al descubierto. Dörner - toda una referencia - y Fagaschinski con sus contenidos soplos a traves de sus respectivos instrumentos, se ven perfectamente complementados por el sampler de Baltschun, al que no conocía pero del que tomo buena nota del nombre para seguirle la pista. 
[...] una duración que es mas que suficiente, tanto para transmitir como para documentar. Tres cuartos de hora. Con esto, en una habitación en penumbra (rasgada por un rayo de luz en el que se ven flotar caoticas particulas de polvo) a un volumen medio bajo… ¿Quién quiere un chill out?. Jesus Moreno (TomaJazz)

Three pieces, three improvisers, three instruments that are almost indistinguishable. In the early 2000s, Axel Dörner has become a master at producing electronic-like sounds with his trumpet, focusing on extremely quiet gestures based on breathing techniques. His later addition of a computer to his live set-up has further blurred the distinction between acoustics and electronics. Like Dörner’s partner Xavier Charles in the ground-breaking album «The Contest of Pleasures», Kai Fagaschinski explores the inner depths of the clarinet: fragile overtones, controlled squonks, more breathing. Boris Baltschun’s sampler emits abstract sounds of an electronic nature, the large majority of them relying on texture and grain, instead of tone. The three pieces on «No Furnitur» have a duration of 13 to 16 minutes. “Chair” is a delicate opening where individual contributions are subsumed to a greater whole. A bit static, it still strikes the imagination. “Table” is more dynamic, noisier (thanks to sustained textures from sampler and computer) and lively, however strange this word may sound when associated with such demanding music. The closing “Bed” stretches to dynamic extremes, improvisers taking turn to unleash sudden loud sounds before regrouping for tutti sections of an extreme precision -- the last three minutes of the piece sound thoroughly composed or at least sketched, like Polwechsel’s compositions -- and the different character of each piece reinforces that impression. Fans of this kind of extremely challenging electro-acoustic improvisation will find in «No Furniture» a close-listening experience to cherish. Recommended. François Couture (AMG)

Germany's «No Furniture» includes Boris Baltschun on sampler, Kai Fagaschinski on clarinet and the veteran trumpeter Axel Dörner, who also plays computer. Dörner has traditional jazz chops, but now eschews linear, expressive playing in favor of extended-technique noises. What he's doing now requires chops of very different kinds, such as the ability to evenly blow air through his horn for twenty seconds at a stretch. It isn't easy, and Dörner does it as precisely as anyone.
That may seem like guitar-school praise, but Dörner's (and Fagaschinski's) technique has a lot to do with what «No Furniture» ultimately sounds like. Dörner and Fagaschinski were trying to make their instruments sound electronic, and they've done so here so well that most traces of humanity have been erased. Dörner often uses long tones and breath sounds, which are dense, complex and consistent enough to be mistaken for radio static. But it's Fagaschinski who wins the Helmut Lachenmann Award for making his instrument almost completely unrecognizable, and not in the 'if you're not paying attention too closely' way in which those sorts of comments are usually intended. His palette of sounds is amazing: it's clear that's he's studied electronic sound carefully, and you'll swear you've heard some of the sounds he makes in electronic contexts. Fagaschinski is usually only identifiable through process of elimination.
That process is made a bit easier because Baltschun's and Dörner's electronics (Dörner's sometimes include the processed sounds of his trumpet) actually sound as if they're created by human beings; although the timbres of the electronics clearly sound, well, electronic, they are often deployed in a spasmodic and aggressive manner. These days there's a lot of overlap between extended technique-based improv and sparse, quiet improv, but «No Furniture» isn't a part of that. Instead, it has more in common with louder, electronics-based improv albums like EKG's Object 2 or the recent dafeldecker/kurzmann/drumm/eRikm/dieb13/noetinger on Charhizma. «No Furniture» is the most confidently controlled of the three, and the only one in which acoustic instruments are consistently and audibly an integral part of its electronic-sounding textures. Charlie Wilmoth (Dusted Mgazine)

They sure don't make revolutions like they used to.
Forty-something years ago, knee-jerk hand wringers were tut-tutting about whatever would be left of music after John Cage. Cage's deep questions, taken in the context of any era, are indeed radical: Is expression necessary if one is to have art? What about authorship? What if all sounds—and silences—had equal worth in a piece of music?
It's taken more than a generation, but today, improvisors such as the three young Berliners on «No Furniture» take Cage as a natural point of departure. Forgetting nearly all music before Cage, their approach may represent the next great leap into the unknown. That leap is about the only thing approaching heroism you'll find in the anti-expressive "lowercase" movement (or "electro-acoustic improv" or "reductionist"; hereafter referred to as l/c) that has taken hold in Europe, not to mention Japan.
Cage and his ideas placidly beat time in the l/c heart. (I'm looking right now at Improvised Music from Japan EXTRA. In it, is a description of a composition employing hand-held electric gizmos, by Otomo Yoshihide: "The performance consisted entirely of their switching the devices on and off according to Otomo's instructions… 'Don't react to other people's sounds; avoid musical vocabulary (rhythm, melody, etc.) as much as possible; do your best to express nothing but sound.'" If that isn't John Cage reincarnated, I'm a shiitake mushroom.) Like much "new" culture, l/c is largely a cloaked visitation upon the past, and is only a breakthrough in that, due to the digital revolution, it's managed to cultivate for itself a tiny but tenacious worldwide community, in line with Cage's 60s-era predictions for the future of culture.
Cage is not the only touchstone for this rarefied sonic art. European improvising musicians of Axel Dörner's generation have pitched their aesthetic tent as a counter-festival to the FMP big top that's held sway over Europe, Germany especially, since the early seventies. Down with the Sturm und Drang, down with expression, down with continuity, solos, and climaxes. Long live glitch! Up with discontinuity! Forward—space! To quote the press release for Dörner's trumpet solo record, titled trumpet (a bruit secret), "What distances him from other jazz trumpet players is the disappearance of the phrase, until it reaches the core of the musical note which he then erases by working on a regular blowing, putting together abstract noises, miniatures of blowing. This abstraction recalls the new electronic aesthetics, a kind of sound that seems to lose its own particular acoustical quality as if generated by an electronic device to create a beautiful ambiguity of sound." Focus your microscope on that verbiage: Between the lines of careful, lightly crackpot description lurks the sort of "end to history" manifesto mongering that's in the bones of postmodernist irony. In our revolution, we erase revolutionism!
Luckily, there are some musicians identified with l/c who have studied their instruments, even if they hardly ever play them. Axel Dörner shouldn't have to prove his chops to anybody. He's left a wide recorded trail of collaborations that include Sam Rivers, John Butcher, Kevin Drumm, Sven-Ake Johanssen, Butch Morris, the King Übü Orchestrü, Fred van Hove, etc, etc. His fluency in whatever regional dialect of music he traverses is always brightly evident; sometimes, it's startling. Dörner's compatriots Boris Baltschun and Kai Fagaschinski are less well known outside of Berlin, but their work on no furniture is no less seasoned than the trumpeter's, and the aesthetic stance they share engenders an intense focus and discipline, resulting in dense burst zones of burned-circuit clamor, each one a perversely detailed volte-face from the last, interrupted by abrupt silences taking up as much room as the sounds.
Further inspired by the revolution in personal computing—or "the new electronic aesthetics", if you please—no furniture locates its activities in a microscopic ecosystem. There's a lot going on, but it's happening at a power of 10(-100). Think of the labyrinthine kinks and parallel folds of the circuits on a microchip: Looks like a dot, to the unaided eye. Under intense magnification, one sees a whirring city, with billions of interactions happening every minute. What's compelling, if not exactly dramatic, is the question of whether activity at this scale can be called gestures, let alone musical statements (as we've come to define them after 450 years of Western music). Do these exchanges have the power to move human hearts and minds, even when amplified? Or do they exist only as non-sentient ones and zeroes, chattering away mindlessly? Honestly, it's kind of creepy, this aesthetic. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with these nanotropic sounds doing things in my ears that I can't keep track of. But that feeling may be just what many l/c artists are after: The creeping unease that accompanies those moments of true apprehension, when we see the myriad scintillating skeins of little green numbers that underlie "reality". (Woah!—how did this turn into a review of The Matrix???)
Listen to the third untitled cut on «No Furniture» for the way the ensemble comes together in an utterly coincidental way; sounds appear with no apparent relation to each other—that's up to us warm-bloodeds to construct and analyze—then stop abruptly, either singly, or, toward the middle of a thick passage, everything stops together. No, wait, there's a fine static still clinging to the ears, like beads of dew on a spider web. The sound just goes on as if it had not in fact emerged unblinking from the metal jungle of noise that birthed it. Nothing happened before, apparently. Memory is being erased here, too, not to mention causality.
At the very end of the cut, in pop a few seconds of unprocessed clarinet and muted trumpet: Surely not a coda or sign-off, is it? That would be a meta-surprise: An old fashioned "ending" ending. Or is it the simulation of a tape-splice or punch-in? (as in, "the new electronic aesthetics…") Perhaps we detect lapses in the revolutionary front, yes? About five minutes into the second cut, Dörner permits himself the all-too-human indulgence of instantaneously creating a trumpet analogue of a low, droning sound from Baltschun's sampler. Soon after, there's a total dropout and then another "musical" moment when Dörner pitch-matches the dominant frequency of an electronic whine. (Well, who knows? Maybe he didn't mean to do it… D'you suppose the l/c union would dock a fella for that?)
The level of instrumental control Fagaschinski, Dörner, and Baltschun bring to the enterprise also seems just beyond the human realm. The wind players, in their quest to mask their entries and exits and tonal qualities, bring enormous forces of control to bear on their embouchures and lungs to sustain these glacial drones. Baltschun's electronic work is concerned with glitches, not pitches, and is often forwarded in the mix, providing ample cover (Dörner is listed on "computer" as well as trumpet, making it often impossible to tell who's responsible for a given sound—giving us another page for our musico-revolutionary loose-leaf: Erasure of ascription). Fagaschinski is the best hidden of the three—clarinet is a most cunning chameleon among the woodwinds. Listen with your ear-o-scope, and you'll hear him ever so lightly fluttering a breathy subtone, there, just under the surface of the sampled rice krispies. Moments like these are enough to transcend all the labored silliness of the "aesthetic revolution" and reward us with pure listening pleasure; the pleasure not just of discovering hidden secrets but pleasure in appreciation of the obsessive care that's put into this music. Somehow, amid the furious negation of expression, beauty rears its ugly head.
As a recorded artifact of a revolution that's erasing itself, «No Furniture» takes no aesthetic prisoners—but there's a king's ransom to engage and provoke. Bring headphones and a quiet room, or you'll miss it. Tom Djll (One Final Note)

For all intents and purposes, it appears as if the interaction between electronics and acoustic instruments has become the paramount preoccupation of improvising musicians in Northern Europe and is rapidly spreading.
Although the members of «No Furniture» are all from Berlin, the label on which its three-part rumination is available is based in Lisbon.
[...] With two of the three participants manipulating instruments as well as electronic devices, «No Furniture» has a completely different cast, often related to the physical breath limitations of trumpeter Axel Dörner and clarinetist Kai Fagaschinski. Boris Baltschun's sampler is the third construct. Baltschun has experience with this electro-acoustic interface as he works regularly with trombonist Günther Christmann and drummer Burkhard Beins.
Neither Dörner, who also uses a computer here, nor Fagaschinski is in any way a conventional player, however. The trumpeter has invented a harsh, almost electro-acoustic brass technique which he has displayed in situations
features inside pianist Andrea Neumann and saxophonist John Butcher, to name two. Noisy, abstract and often pre-melodic, the clarinetist doesn't so much play his axe as conceptually force air through it to see what results. A veteran solo improviser, he also works in situations with guitarist Michael Renkel and laptopist Christof Kurzmann.
"... [symbol table]" is this CD's most distinctive track, as its twists and turns illustrate both the electric and the acoustic components of the band. Initially it shapes up as a melange of the repetitive hisses and gurgles of what's probably backwards running tapes, then stop-and-start, cylindrical tones, followed by air forced through the bell of the trumpet without moving the valves. Soon as this sound turn to fierce growls, Fagaschinski pumps lighter, fluttering tones into the equation and controlled signals oscillate from the sampler.
Following a few seconds of silence, electronically created intermittent power surges presage juicy, persistent snarls from trumpet, at least until the sampler output turns into something resembling harpsichord-like continuum. As the miasma of tones solidifies into a mass, whirling, tornado-like textures give way to Bronx cheer buzzes from the trumpet, plus low-pitched renal snarls and tongue percussion from the reed, until lapsing into silence.
Surrounding this track, the two other pieces are alive with rubbery tones and vibrated static to the extent that the textures are often felt rather than heard. On ".... [symbol bed]" minute clarinet trills and bird whistles vie with an overlay of static and the squeals of items being slid across the studio floor. Pulsating sampled color then gives way to the sounds of heavy air being forced through the bell and body tube of the horn as bantam jackhammer whacks meet reed smears and brassy buzzed grace notes. After a fluttering single reed trill is heard, then vanishes, textures coalesce into a droning pitch midway between booting up a computer and the clangorous innards of a mechanical toy.
As with the best of acoustic improvised music, this trio here has adapted electronics to its own needs and conceptions. Ken Waxman (Jazz Weekly)

Abstraction rules for this Berlin trio; trumpeter Axel Dörner blows turbulently straited columns of air through his horn, frequently treating them with electronics, while clarinest Kai Fagashinski uncorks fragile harmonic snorts, whinnies and whispers. Sometimes the pair even play conventional-sounding notes. These shifting, aspirated sound streams are embedded in austere beds of electronic tones and twitters constructed by sampler player Boris Baltschun, a mix of jagged pitch-shifting and subdued rumbling. The music hovers, marbled with wind-tunnel harmonic effects. Peter Margasak (Down Beat)

Niezwykle konsekwentnie przeprowadzona synteza brzmien elektronicznych oraz akustycznych, z jaka mamy do czynienia w przypadku "No Furniture", powinna przekonac do wspólczesnej elektroakustycznej muzyki improwizowanej nawet jej najbardziej nieprzejednanych przeciwników. Intensywnosc dzwieku, zróznicowaniu dynamiki, zlozona faktura, bogate i nasycone brzmienie to tylko niektóre z zalet materialu zawartego na omawianej plycie.
Odpowiadajace za jej powstanie trio rozpoczelo regularna wspólprace juz w 2001 roku, poczatkowo ograniczajac sie tylko do koncertów, jednak do studia muzycy weszli dopiero w listopadzie 2002. Plyta powstawala dosc dlugo, bowiem caly proces nagrywania oraz pózniejszej obróbki zawartego na niej materialu trwal blisko rok. Zapewne to wlasnie miedzy innymi z tego powodu trudno jest odgadnac, co zostalo skomponowane, a co wyimprowizowane.
Sluchajac "No Furniture" odnosi sie wrazenie, ze mamy do czynienia z muzyka, w której niczego nie pozostawiono przypadkowi; zdaje sie ona byc dokladnie przemyslana i szczególowo zaplanowana. I niech nie zwiedzie nikogo nieco fragmentaryczna struktura nagran, bo te swoiste "zlepki", zdawaloby sie nieprzystajacych do siebie, watków skladaja sie na konsekwentnie zakomponowana calosc, pozwalajac przy tym muzykom na doglebna eksploracje dzwiekowego uniwersum. Niezwykle momentami halasliwa, oczywiscie jak na te trójke, elektronika, nadaje tej muzyce dziwnie metaliczny posmak, a brzmienie instrumentów akustycznych, momentami slyszalnych jakby z boku, to znów przykrytych szumami samplera, niewiele rózni sie od dzwieków pochodzenia elektronicznego. Sprawia to, ze odnosi sie wrazenie, ze za muzyke odpowiedzialna jest nie trzyosobowa formacja, lecz jeden osobliwy organizm, w którym nikt i nic nie dominuje. Zaiste, wielka sztuka jest wyzwolic sie z dyktatu ego i w pelni podporzadkowac sie wspólnej koncepcji.
W ten wlasnie sposób - co zakrawa niemalze na paradoks - Baltschun, Dörner i Fagaschinski udowodnili, ze sa nie tylko wielkimi muzykami, ale i prawdziwymi osobowosciami. Trzy kilkunastominutowe utwory - nieopatrzone tytulami, a tylko swoiscie "podpisane" rysunkami przedstawiajacymi fotel, stól oraz lózko, sa, w jakis przedziwny sposób, równoczesnie do siebie podobne i calkowicie odmienne. Skladaja sie na niezwykle spójna i jednoczesnie urozmaicona plyte, do poznania, której goraco zachecam. Tadeusz Kosiek (http://www.diapazon.pl/)

Chacun des trois morceaux, d'une quinzaine de minutes chacun, est désigné par le dessin schématique d'un meuble: chaise, table ou lit: voila pour le titre. Les couinements de la trompette de Dörner sont mis en parallèle avec des souffles et des parasites, le son extrêmement tenu varie très peu. Ne reste à l'auditeur qu'à trouver que faire de ce très peu qui lui est donné: par exemple se demander quel projet l'a fait exister. Les musiciens eux-mêmes y semblent déplacés mais se tiennent bien dans ce non-lieu en se retenant d'en faire trop. Question peut-être de rendre tout son mystère a l'art des sons. Cet objet peu aimable possède de la dignité, une rigueur sans appel qui rend le temps étale comme entre deux marées. Noël Tachet (Improjazz)

Improvisação livre, tendência electroacústica berlinense deste início de século. Boris Baltschun (sampler), Axel Dörner (computador, trompete) e Kai Fagaschinski (clarinete) formam um trio de músicos empenhado em trabalhar sobre a essência e a musicalidade dos fenómenos sonoros. Realizam um interessante trabalho de pesquisa e investigação sobre texturas, granulados, superfícies lisas, finas ou espessas, linhas oblíquas, intersecções e sobreposições de planos, combinações e recombinações de timbres, diferentes durações e intensidades – tudo concorre para criar uma sensação de movimento, lento ou rápido consoante a “velocidade” mental que o ouvinte lhe queira ou possa imprimir. Porém, nada se move aqui; por isso a ilusão é perfeita. A ideia de Baltschun, Dörner e Fagaschinski, pode ter sido a de formular uma proposta que tem por base o uso do som enquanto valor acústico não concretamente referenciável a notas musicais, combinando-o, num contexto pré-melódico, com notas longas, isoladamente consideradas. Deste modo estabelecem-se interessantes intercâmbios e transposições entre aqueles dois campos, de onde nascem módulos e estruturas que causam perplexidade pela forma como se estruturam e se organizam com o fito de interpelar o ouvinte, não apenas quanto à identificação da fonte ou fontes sonoras que se fazem ouvir num dado momento (em cada instante), mas – e sobretudo – para tentar apreender os vários níveis em que se desenvolve a macro-construção deste complexo mecanismo. Há em No Furniture (Creative Sources 009) uma curiosa geometria de limites ocultos que se vai revelando à medida que progride no tempo. E é justamente o tempo que dá forma ao espaço em cada instante, que lhe fixa os subtis contornos e direcções de expansão, como as linhas exteriores que desenham os módulos Chair (12'47), Table (16'38) e Bed (16'07). Três quadros de uma composição espacial, que, tal como a mobília, servem necessidades humanas, sejam elas básicas ou mais elaboradas. Eduardo Chagas (Jazz e Arredores)

[...] The duo of Berlin clarinetist Kai Fagaschinski and Viennese sine-wave manipulator Klaus Filip, dissolve the distinctions between acoustic instruments and electronics on their superb debut, last year's Stand Clear (Creative Sources). Fagaschinski plays with stunning control, climbing into the clarinet's extreme upper registers to meld with his partner's pure electronic tones or using unpitched, striated breath streams to contrast with them. More than just noisemakers, these two engage in high-level give-and-take.[...] Peter Margasak (Chicago Reader)