kunststoff

Birgit Ulher | Ute Wassermann| cs017

Kunststoff strikes a unique balance between a mostly undemonstrative exterior and a subtle and sophisticated inner energy. The idea of a voice/trumpet duo might seem unlikely, but what is immediately remarkable about this music is the way that a single composite instrument is created by the two performers, in which their use of unfamiliar techniques and articulations can lead either to an internally-active unison or a complex tangle of interweaving threads. The structures of these ten pieces are improvised freely but each with an intense concentration on a musical centre of gravity which shifts from one piece to the next. The result has as little to do with jazz as with the current trend towards – reductionism - in improvised music and is a document of an inspired collaboration.

Richard Barrett