47º13' N 7ºE |cs208

Oh no! Not another spinet duo! :-) I guess the basic sound is midway between a piano and a harpsichord not that you'll hear the spinet's "normal sound very often here. But there are remnants of that metallic, buzzing twang in the rustles, rubbings and plucks encountered herein. Much of the music is active and skittering, but the duo manages to exercise restraint at the same time, creating a strong sense of consciousness of the moment and surroundings, something evidenced on the occasions when they pause and allow the sounds to linger and dissipate. It's astringent and full at once, no mean feat. They go astray every so often, scratching about for a minute or two to no great effect, but by and large this is a surprisingly effective recording. Whoda thunk? Brian Olewnick (Just Outside)

This record is the final one from the last batch Creative Sources sent me (see previous entries). Schiller and Danzeisen play the spinett – an old keyboard instrument in the same family as the harpsichord – or rather, they use the spinett as a resounding body. They scratch, pat, hit, and use various preparations on the wood and the strings – it could have been a grand piano, or even a doublebass. Two long improvisations that left me cold. Either these pieces lack development and quickly run out of ideas, or I’m really not receptive to this kind of thing this morning. François Couture (Monsieur Délire)

Oh no! Not another spinet duo! :-) I guess the basic sound is midway between a piano and a harpsichord not that you'll hear the spinet's "normal sound very often here. But there are remnants of that metallic, buzzing twang in the rustles, rubbings and plucks encountered herein. Much of the music is active and skittering, but the duo manages to exercise restraint at the same time, creating a strong sense of consciousness of the moment and surroundings, something evidenced on the occasions when they pause and allow the sounds to linger and dissipate. It's astringent and full at once, no mean feat. They go astray every so often, scratching about for a minute or two to no great effect, but by and large this is a surprisingly effective recording. Whoda thunk? Olewnick (Just Outside)

This record is the final one from the last batch Creative Sources sent me (see previous entries). Schiller and Danzeisen play the spinett – an old keyboard instrument in the same family as the harpsichord – or rather, they use the spinett as a resounding body. They scratch, pat, hit, and use various preparations on the wood and the strings – it could have been a grand piano, or even a doublebass. Two long improvisations that left me cold. Either these pieces lack development and quickly run out of ideas, or I’m really not receptive to this kind of thing this morning. François Couture (Monsieur Délire)

A spinet (or "bent-side spinet") is a small type of harpsichord whose soundboard juts out to the right of the keyboard, allowing an easy view and access for the (experimental) musician. Because of structural and mechanical limitations, it produces less expression and rich harmonics (a proper harpsichord employs a dual set of strings and individual disposition controls to allow two "choirs"); with the reduced reverberation due to body size and the need to cram more real estate in less space, the spinet is often seen as the poor-man's keyboard of the times (17th century). In other words, the appearance of a spinet at Christmas probably meant your parents' royalty status was flunking.
Pianist Christoph Schiller moved to spinet ten years ago to 1) play Baroque music with a representative instrument 2) free his creativity from the "history of piano music" 3) have a travelling keyboard and skip the scramble to find / adjust to another axe while on the road. He soon discovered that the so-called short-comings of the spinet revealed a number of possibilities for a new voice: the higher strings allow for better bowing; the lower tension of the sound board creates more dynamics when applying e-bows (that little magnetic resonator made famous by U2's The Edge and Bauhaus guitarist Daniel Ash). And so on. With fellow aficionado / visual artist Lea Danzeisen on a second spinet, Schiller performed two extended works ("zehn" for thirty-three minutes, "neun" at just under fifteen) in Switzerland at the global position indicated by the title.
The first impression of the sounds generated by the duo is the fragility of the spinet. Much less lugubrious and difficult to damper than prepared piano, instrument is nimble and able to stop / start with a smaller amount of effort. This might be due to Schiller's microphone placement (way up inside the body) but the intimacy is concentrated, and each strike — including the forcibly sustained passages — is minimally resonant; one is reminded more of Hugh Davies' microscopic sonic universe (i.e. Music for Springs) and Taku Sugimoto's subtle guitarisms than the Cage / Tudor legacy. But coupled with all the space and delicacy is a complex animation stuffed with a limitless arsenal. The duo moves from strokes and pinches, muted plucks, tiny maraca trickles, scrapes, woody taps, metallic hammer-on snaps and an otherwise pointillist approach to sudden clamorous fits where strings are feverishly rubbed with various materials and objects forcibly cascade across the instrument(s). Twenty minutes into the first work, the duo settles into a united almost-drone of breathy (?) whispers, rubbery nudges, nearly inaudible bowing and percussive tinkering in the high register. From there, the piece collides into a hyperactive disorder of who-knows-what, a culmination of all previous techniques at once that shows the virtuosity of Schiller and Danzeisen's imaginations, ability to transmogrify (also note "the beginning of "neun" where the e-bows create the lower range of clarinets) and athletic physicality. Dave Madden (The Squid’s Ear)

One of who knows how many releases on the Creative Sources label sat awaiting my eventual attention here right now, Christoph Schiller and Lee Danzeisen’s 47°13′N7°E might just be the only improvised spinett duo I’m ever likely to hear. In truth, before I first heard Schiller’s music a few years back I don’t think I was even aware of what a spinett was (similar to a harpsichord for those still drawing a blank) though to be honest the way this duo put them to use we don’t hear much of how the traditional instrument was designed to sound. Schiller certainly has a specially prepared instrument, and while it is impossible to tell from the scratchy tinkling sounds here whether Danzeisen uses a similar degree of preparation there are certainly no traditionally struck keynotes anywhere here at all. The sounds we hear then are mostly very small, little crackling, fidgety, clicks and pops and rubbing sounds, all mostly at the quieter end of the scale, but gathering into dense clouds quite often that brings the volume up collectively. Neun, the second and shorter of the two pieces here introduced some more electronic sounding tones at the opening of the piece, presumably created using eBows or something similar on the strings, but otherwise everything here has the feel of quite a dry, microscopic and thoroughly acoustic affair.

On the whole its a really nice listen. Its mostly impossible to tell the two voices apart, partly because obviously they are both playing similar instruments, but also because their approaches seem closely attuned, with both musicians opting for a more intimate, understated methodology. When the music pulls itself up and out into the clouds of activity we hear often, and particularly in the half hour plus opening track Zehn, everything comes together really dramatically, tiny sounds swarming like ants working together en masse, gradually converging until suddenly they are everywhere. Elsewhere perhaps things lose their way occasionally, and its easy for the details to overdo themselves from time to time, particularly in the calmer passages of Zehn, when the duo’s sounds seem to wander off track into little tangents when perhaps even more restraint could have served the music better, but all in all this is a solid and thoroughly enjoyable album that sounds like it has been made by two musicians thoroughly enjoying themselves. Richard Pinnell (The Wacthful Ear)

Sur ce disque Christoph Schiller est en duo avec Lea Danzeisen, tous les deux crédités à l'épinette. L'instrumentation est originale, certes, mais la musique pas tant que ça. Il s'agit de deux improvisations libres, qui pourraient faire penser à un duo guitare/piano préparé ou cadre de piano.

Des improvisations réactives et énergiques qui explorent quand même un nombre assez impressionnant de techniques étendues et de préparations. Schiller surtout, s'emploie toujours à produire un univers sonore hors du commun, un univers abstrait de sons bruts, des bruits métalliques, des résonances de ressorts, bruissement des cordes frottées par des feuillages, etc. Et de son côté, Danzeisen utilise plus traditionnellement l'épinette, de manière atonale, par le biais du clavier ou en allant directement pincer les cordes à l'intérieur du cadre. Comme souvent dans l'improvisation libre actuelle, héritage du réductionnisme oblige, il y a des moments très calmes de pure exploration sonique, mais dans l'ensemble Schiller et Danzeisen jouent assez fort, avec énergie, varie souvent l'intensité et la densité du son, réagissent l'un à l'autre et se confondent souvent en une masse sonore de cordes surprenantes. C'est souvent quand les deux se confondent et s'éloignent le plus de l'épinette que l'improvisation devient intéressante et surprend par son côté aventureux. Mais dans l'ensemble, ce disque ressemble pas mal à une étude pour épinettes préparées et à une démonstration de techniques étendues.

Le dialogue entre les deux marche très bien, mais il manque la forme, trop faussement spontanée (ou galvaudée) et démonstrative à mon goût. Mais par contre l'exploration de l'épinette et la création de textures et de couleurs neuves sont assez saisissantes. Julien Heraud (ImprovSphere)