PRICE:
$17.00
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Returns
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
STAUB 089CD STAUB 089CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
1/20/2009

This is the duo of Harald Sack Ziegler and Frank Schültge Blumm aka Sack & Blumm, and this is the first release on Staubgold since 2003's Kind Kind. For Kind Kind, they sent "musical" letters back and forth between Cologne and Berlin. For Returns, they sat side-by-side in front of their recording equipment in Berlin to be able to communicate their musical ideas more directly. Sack & Blumm present a very autonomous, unpretentious music; music which caters to no audience and which is vaguely reminiscent of the kind of music children play, but which never attempts to emulate their naïveté, due to the subtle virtuosity with which they play their instruments. They're not so much playful as they are receptive in their play, always willing and prepared to follow their ears. Sack & Blumm give each other a lot of space. Within these spaces, their instruments meet, mostly without the disguise of effects. And just like the drops on the cover designed by Eric "E*Rock" Mast (head of the Audio Dregs label), are not just a displays of themselves, but seem to present a microscopic viewing of something underneath them. The compositions of Sack & Blumm are also apt to be acoustic amplifiers of the minutest soundscapes, to serve as magnifying glasses for extremely delicate musical processes and events. And there are quite a lot of these on Returns. Seven guest musicians left their traces on the 23 tracks. Elaborately-arranged fabrics of percussion; the interplay of many-voiced horns with trunks, doors, guitars, pianos, elastophones and unobtrusive electronica; a melody triggering fleeting memories of a Western; breathing sound loops, etc., all of this does not add up to a randomly-assembled jigsaw of sounds. Instead, it is a kite which is released and guided by safe and steady hands, and which inhabits the winds of all climate zones.