Label: Trost Records – TR 112
Format: 5 × CD, Compilation Box Set; Country: Austria - Released: 15 Feb 2013
Style: Free Improvisation, Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Blues Rock, Art Rock, Avantgarde
Recorded at the 25th edition of the Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria, November 3-6, 2011.
Artwork, Design, Supervised By [Curated By] – Peter Brötzmann
Compilation Producer – Konstantin Drobil
Compiled By, Edited By – Peter Brötzmann, Peter Neuhauser
Design [Additional] – Gerald Waibel
Liner Notes – Markus Müller, Wolfgang Wasserbauer
Mastered By – Martin Siewert
Photography By – Peter Gannushkin, Ziga Koritnik
Recorded By [All Live Recordings], Mixed By – Manuel Mitterhuber
LONG STORY SHORT, the festival organized as the 25th edition of the Unlimited in Wels, Austria (3.-6.November 2011) ventured to design a festival around Peter Brotzmann's practice. Not a retrospective but a representation of the contemporary musical spheres that Brotzmann and his comrades are investigating today.18 performances in this box document Brotzmann's close ties to the Chicago scene, his inclination to work with Japanese artists, his cultivation of old and new friendships from New York, his admiration for African musicians and collaborations with his European friends.
The extensive compilation emphasizes the vitality and variety of Brotzmann's current work and documents a historical moment of the Unlimited-Festival.These were special days with very special perfomances, intense experiences for everybody involved - musicians and audience (the venue was completely sold out months before).- Trost
1. Sonore – Untitled
Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Brötzmann - reeds
2. Chicago Tentet with John Tchicai – Untitled
John Tchicai, Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Brötzmann - reeds; Jeb Bishop, Johannes Bauer - trombones; Joe McPhee - trumpet; Per Ake Holmlander - tuba; Fredrick Lonberg-Holm - cello; Kent Kessler - bass; Paal Nilssen-Love, Michael Zerang - drums
3. Michiyo Yagi, Okkyung Lee, Xu Fengxia – Untitled
Okkyung Lee - cello; Xu Fengxia - guzheng; Michiyo Yagi - koto (21-string, 17-string bass koto)
4. Peter Brötzmann, Masahiko Sato, Takeo Moriyama – Untitled
Peter Brötzmann - reeds, Masahiko Sato - piano, Takeo Moriyama - drums
PETER BRÖTZMANN’s Long Story Short (Music Unlimited Festival), Wels, Austria, 5-6 November 2011 - (by Richard Rees Jones)
Peter Brötzmann has been on tour even more than usual in 2011, this being the year in which he celebrates his 70th birthday. But where did he choose to have the main event, the one that brought together pretty much all of his musical friends and collaborators, the Brötzfest to end all Brötzfests? Not Germany, not Japan and certainly not the UK, but Austria of course. Two years in the planning, Long Story Short was also the 25th Music Unlimited festival, an annual event rivalled only by the Konfrontationen festival in (this is getting embarrassing) Austria in its ability to attract, year after year, the world ’ s leading names in free jazz and improvised music. I was only able to make two of the festival’s four days, but the riches presented on those days were more than enough to convince one of the epochal, never- to-be-repeated nature of the event. As, indeed, was the staggering fact that the festival was sold out weeks in advance; how often has that happened at a free jazz fest?
1 Joe McPhee, MaÂllem Mokhtar Gania, Fredrick Lonberg-Holm, Michael Zerang – Untitled
Joe McPhee - trumpet, saxophone; Fredrick Lonberg-Holm - cello; Michael Zerang - drums; MaÂllem Mokhtar Gania - guimbri
2 Peter Brötzmann, Michiyo Yagi, Tamaya Honda –Untitled
Peter Brötzmann - reeds, Michiyo Yagi - koto (21-string, 17-string bass koto), Tamaya Honda - drums
3 Peter Brötzmann, Jason Adasiewicz, Sabu Toyozumi – Untitled
Peter Brötzmann - reeds, Jason Adasiewicz - vibraphone, Sabu Toyozumi - drums
4 Dieb13, Mats Gustafsson, Martin Siewert – Untitled
Mats Gustafsson - reeds, electronics (live); Martin Siewert - guitar, effects (ring stinger), electronics; Dieb13 - turntables, effects (cigar box)
Having said all that, I could probably have done without the extended set by Keiji Haino which opened the third full evening of the festival (I unfortunately missed what must have been a corking clash between Mats Gustafsson, dieb13 and Martin Siewert in the afternoon). Haino’s schtick is beginning to grate on me, a feeling planted by the lengthy vocal improv with which he kicked off and confirmed by the even longer instrumental passages which followed. The anguished cries, moans and utterances were those of a man being sick, while the pieces for guitar and analogue devices were intermittently entertaining but dragged on long after the point had been made. Ultimately, I would be more inclined to look favourably upon Haino’s performance if his persona weren’t so wilfully enigmatic and impenetrable, a pose that set him apart from just about every other artist at the festival.
It was something of a relief, therefore, when Peter Brötzmann took the stage for what turned out to be one of the grooviest, most sheerly enjoyable sets I’ve ever heard him play. This was due in no small part to his three co-musicians, all of whom were new to me: bassist Bill Laswell (yes, the man who ruined the sound of Swans on The Burning World), drummer Hamid Drake and guembri player Mokhtar Gania. You could tell this set was going to be unusual right from the moment Brötzmann hauled the bass saxophone onstage, a beast I’ve never heard him play before. Kicking off in duo format with Laswell’s undulant bass lines cascading around the thick resonances of the sax, the pair were shortly joined by Drake, who made an immediate impression with the deep rolling thunder of his percussion. As Brötzmann switched to tenor the exotically voiced Gania entered, and slipped with the rest of the troupe into an extended, irresistible groove. This extraordinary meeting brought into sharp relief one of the most remarkable things about Brötzmann ’ s recent work: the fact that he is not only a European, not only a member of the Chicago axis, but also, and increasingly, an internationalist.
1 Keiji Haino – Untitled
Keiji Haino - electric guitar, voice
2 Peter Brötzmann, Bill Laswell, MaÂllem Mokhtar Gania, Hamid Drake – Untitled
Peter Brötzmann - reeds, Bill Laswell - electric bass, Hamid Drake - drums, MaÂllem Mokhtar Gania - guimbri
From a completely new configuration to one of Brötzmann’s regular gigs, the Hairy Bones quartet with Massimo Pupillo, Toshinori Kondo and Paal Nilssen-Love. I’ve said all I have to say about this scorching line-up in previous reviews, so let me just note that this was Peter’s third full show of the day (a feat he was to repeat the following day), that the Alter Schlachthof remained packed even though the group didn’t come onstage until 12.30am, and that Brötzmann was, unusually for him, moved to complain about the onstage sound. It sounded fine to me in row 3, but who’s to say what he was or was not able to hear through his monitors. Isn’t that the sort of thing that’s supposed to be sorted out at soundcheck, though?...
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