Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Désarroi
Somehow, I keep finding myself with these reviews I don’t feel qualified to write. It gets stressful, I start smoking again, then there’s the bag of glue and it all ends in a murder suicide in a longshoreman’s hut near Aberdeen port.
On first inspection Kammerflimmer Kollektief feels like one of those. A skim of what other reviewers have said fills me with a sense of dread, like that reoccurring dream where I’m naked in an art gallery and I am surrounded by people in black clothes with straight fringes. Someone is mixing a blender with Studio 1 and Enya and I am on the verge of tears as I keep asking “Yeah, but what is it? What does it mean? Why a triangle?”
Then I remember I’d heard the thing before I threw my hand up and the sample I’d heard was fantastic.
I notice in reviews people like to throw about big words like “Nice” and dazzle with complex musical terms like “beat” and “arpeggio”. Or they throw out descriptions of emotions the reader may have difficulty relating to, like “This makes me uncomfortable”.
Take for example Venetian Snares’ “Who wants cake” (from My So-Called Life); that reminds me of an awkward moment when I was trying to masturbate with a Kitkat in a cold bathtub. Then I remember I don’t have the right genitals.
It’s very hard for me to take the reader on that little journey and make them understand, even with the provided pictorial guide.
I must admit, to the best of my flimsy memory, until Kamerflimmer Kollektief floated by in email. They were unknown to me. This is a little irritating because they are rather splendid. There is too much culture to parse alone and the people with the skills get lost in in the din, with all their precious music discoveries. But I have them now and that, is all that matters.
“Désarroi”, Kammerflimmer Kollektief’s tenth album was released in February 2015 by Staubgold.
Founded in 1998 by Markus Detmer (Klangwart) in Cologne (then Berlin, now Perpignan). The label had its origins in minimal electronic. With “Music out of Place” as its philosophy, Staubgold has a gibberingly eclectic range of over one-hundred and thirty releases. Artists ranging from; The Flying Lizards, David Cunningham, Faust, To Rococo Rot, Mapstation, Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Ekkehard Ehlers, Rafael Toral, Oren Ambarchi and Leafcutter John to name but a few.
Thomas Weber started Kammerflimmer Kollektief as a lone man bedroom project of ambient, noise and electronic before expanding into a six-piece collective in 1999. Subsequent touring would result in their 1999 debut full-length, Maander.
Free-form Jazz, Augustus Pablo and Dub, the likes of Neu! and Can Krautrock, Swedish Biker rock. A lot of names and genres get bandied about by carefully worded (but invaluable) press releases and other journalists about the web. It’s as if there is a quiet competition to see how many gushing references you can jam into a coherent article to review and describe the sounds. Nineteen years late to this game, I see no reason not to join in.
Lots of artists try the whole blend of styles, noise and vibration, and fail. At best they sound like a hollow world music album after some music executive drank all its soul and happiness. Real brass was probably replaced with keyboard brass. Someone may have added extra saxophone. At worst it sounds like someone with an angle grinder trying to extract humanity from Phil Collins’ brittle yet razor sharp tears.
Here, we have a release that feels like the soundtrack that elevated a film from good to great.
t’s a bit like a 1920’s Krakow Klezmer Jazz band got drunk with Giallo Morricone, Eyvind Kang, Earth, Elek Bacsik and Charles Mingus.
But, it’s more than that, there’s fragments of trip hop and elastic female vocals like Ámalia Rodrigues. Weber builds the songs up from recordings of the band improvising to create lush atmospheric jamscapes.
Désarroi #1: Mayhem! opens the album with tense bristling strings and sets the mood perfectly. You’ve just arrived at the Kammerflimmer Kollektief and you’ve no idea what to expect because you didn’t read the press release and those bits echo vaguely of Kang and Susumu Yokota and you’re fine with that.
Désarroi #2: Grundstürzend treads fringes of similarity to Dylan Carslon’s Earth, Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method era, Neil Young’s work on Dead Man and again the over arching whispers of Morricone and Roy Budd.
Free Form Freak-Out is a startling piece of noise and ambience that will worm its way into DJ sets. And for me, it and Evol Jam (edit) would be worth the price of the release alone. This might be one of the few times on the album I feel the band hits the psychedelic box they’ve been put into.
Amidst these sits Evol Jam (edit), the first track with vaguely traditional vocals. It is densely pretty and more than an equal to anything in the main. Uplifting and old-new feeling, it is one of those beautiful hit singles of the spring that people will bond friendship over or take a pad out in the cold to write a gushing review about. But what are you doing reading what I think about the songs, you’ve got the youtube links now, g’wan take yer ears an’ get out of here.
Désarroi #3: Burned is a sample filled, widely cinematic piece that reminds of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Jimmy Cake and Blue Sky Black Death. We are in the middle of a film that does not exist, Macguffins and guns have given momentum.
Désarroi #4: Unlösbar continues the soundtrack to a film I wish Olmi, Wojciech Has, Dukić or Pawlikowski would make. I’d try and describe the genres touched on in this track but I have given up, I’m tired and there are wolves after me.
Désarroi #5: Saumselig maintains the Earth Giallo strings but has touches of ’70s dystopian Sci-Fi and for some reason gives me an overwhelming desire to re-watch ‘The Conversation’.
ZURÜCK ZUM BETON (VERSION) — KAMMERFLIMMER KOLLEKTIEF from Bernd Schoch on Vimeo.
Zurück zum Beton (Version) (Back to concrete), a cover of 1978 hit by West-German punk legends S.Y.P.H. closes the album neatly. A moment is tense Giallo strings then hints of trip-hop psychedelia before gliding into a sort of beguiling German electronic soul.
Désarroi has held up to the constant repeat listening I do while reviewing and while I don’t find it even nearly as experimental as other sources claim it to be. It is something I will end up recommending (where recommend is hassle) my friends to get or at least listen to. Where listen is forced because they visited and have no choice and friends are mannequins filled with pigs blood.
For those, like me, not hugely versed on late 1970s West-German punk, below is the original version of Zurück zum Beton by S.Y.P.H — incidentally, here is an explanation of their name as taken from Discogs, which, I hope to be right through the power of collector OCD “Thomas Schwebel hit upon the idea of naming the band “Syph” because it’s a dirty name. Harry Rag added the periods to make it look like an acronym and confuse people. S.Y.P.H. was then translated into “Saufender Yankee Prügelt Homo” (Drinking yankee beats queer). After 1986 it stood for “Save Your Pretty Heart”
Kammerflimmer Kollektief’s tenth album, Désarroi can be bought directly from Staubgold
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