Konfrontationen 2005 / Nickelsdorf Jazzgalerie

Friday afternoon July 22: Sten Sandell is first musician to arrive that afternoon. Orders a beer and wiener schnitzel in the restaurant. By midnite he has his head in his hands and doesn't move for an entire set of music. White suit, cream t-shirt on, still life with happy exhausted ears.

First actual set of music is in the Kunsthaus, a new gallery down the street that is covered with photographs from the last 25 years of people around the festival (Lindsay Cooper waving her pinky at her bassoon; Wilbert de Joode taking an afternoon nap on a bench.) John Butcher and Christoff Kurzmann eventually work it out and start it up and I watch from behind so I can look at the laptop screen. Music was dense with open space and suddenly unfurling texturewarps. Kurzmann had something connected externally to his laptop that let him physically control some shit and he kind of beat it and went at it physically like it was a videogame joystick except his actions had direct musical and not fantasy effects. John was sputtered and round as usual.

1st set actually at the festival space was Trapist. Brandlmayer was astonishing to watch drum. Played 85% of the set with brushes. Then the last 10 minutes with white felt-covered mallets. Really has an awkward precision complex that makes great music. I'd call it robotic if it wasn't so damn humanoid and manipulative in weird patterns. Let's just say sharp, and filled with strange decisions about which beats to accent. Siewert was a good guitarist who embraced the moment well when the rhythm section decided to pound out some glory beats -- Siewert stood up, put the guitar strap around his shoulder and did the best Floyd-esque psychedelic slow guitar solo you'll ever be likely to get from a psychosober(?>/) Austrian();-=) artnerd. Really good shit. Siewert had to feel like a god to be able to play on top of the heavy shit the rhythm section was laying down.

Next set was Georg Graewe and Mary Oliver. Oliver's violin was superhappy and short-term-memory driven. She wanted action at all times. Her playing was so hyperexistingly on the surface that she was impossible not to pay attention to and I enjoyed her, as light music mostly, and sometimes as something pretty fun. It took me 40 minutes to be able to hear Graewe; he just sounded muddy. But because Oliver was so stiffly on the tip of all available aural consciousness, once I heard Graewe (mentally) I could really dig how they were goading each other on. She had some annoying habits, like vocalizing what the violin was doing (which was unnecessary, her violin thoroughly said it) but overall I found it quite an enjoyable set, especially for one which I had came to with no expectations.

And then we are treated to Joe Williamson back on stage, this time with Olaf Rupp playing an acoustic guitar to his left, audience's right, and playing it like he was hugging an upright wooden bee sting. He literally holds the guitar on one leg, with the neck perpendicular to the ground and out away from his body (of course he eventually falls all over it, but he starts out like he's pushing it away because it stinks but he still thinks he can get in its pants so he doesn't want to treat it so bad). And then there's Tony Buck to Joe's, audience's left. This set was one long hoedown, and though it seemed like the first set to really ignite the audience, I was only partly charmed. Buck's playing was fast and hot, but to my ears there was little to no dynamic. That doesn't mean it wasn't fun watching these guys sweat raccoons out of their foreheads trying to keep up with constant acceleration and density, but I was more in the mood for interaction and pausing and context and maybe-then-some-rapid-sound-hurling, not constant warfare stepping all over itself. Then again, it was "weird weapons" and they really did play like that, as if they each had weapons, and in the context of weapons they were weird, but they were still going to fire relentlessly at each other. Highly energized, audience screaming for an encore afterwards. Didn't totally get it, but still had a pretty good time watching the raucous ruckus.

Final set of Friday night was a nuthouse octet of 7 Italians + Tristan Honsinger playing a musical / theatrical set-piece that Tristan wrote in 12 parts. Paper was distributed beforehand with descriptions of each of the 12 songs; this paper was in English, the entire performance was in Italian, the Austrians didn't give it a standing ovation, but Dmitri and I did. Where to begin really describing this thing? Ever heard Tristan's old band This That and the Other? Similar feel. This ensemble, called Small Talk, had one male vocalist and sometime thereminist, a drummer, 2 bassists (one of whom was kind of the main actor, with costumes and movements etc.), a female vocalist and accordionist, Tristan on cello + "ostrich" and "Gertrude", and one clarinetist and one saxophonist. The sung parts ranged from discussions about love in the context of getting a bank loan; "an untranslatable story about an ostrich who takes a shit in a policeman's boot"; suicide for love and after love and in spite of love; the possibility of a suicide bomber on this bus!!!!!! (signified by a paper airplane landing on stage from the audience); war wounds; a discontent military cane-dependent goggle-and-jumpsuit-wearing and stage-hobbling and wandering Samuel Beckett impersonation; nurse vs. wounded soldier erotic scenarios; the donning of fezzes and fake mustaches; excerpts from Wittgenstein's Treatise on Logic (still in Italian mind you, but read VERY convincingly to nurse from male vocalist as she repeatedly pronounces a soldier dead as he lies on a cot in the middle of the stage; she puts her hands down his jumpsuit and he tries to signal to her that he's still alive…thanks Wittgy, it wouldn't be logic without you; thanks Tristan, we'd never have swing if we didn't have a treatise to make music out of); all to a backdrop of slamming Mediterranean jazz. This shit was hilarious, very realistic in terms of portraying the absurdity and truth of love, very realistic in terms of portraying the absurdity and beauty of art. I can't imagine a more physically fun, or more intellectually and emotionally stimulating set. Also great to have Hans Falb (the presence/ reason / everything behind this festival) laughing his ass off and nodding his head sitting right next to us.

Time to move to Saturday, but before that let's go over what we've eaten at the Jazzgalerie so far: 1 wiener schnitzel with salat; 2 salt sandwiches (ham and/or cheese on bigsaltchunk covered bread -- these are available all night during the festival and are pretty goddamn wonderful, brought out on huge platters to the back wooden bar every hour or so) and lots of beer. Next morning I had meatball soup for breakfast, and then veggie spring rolls an hour later before heading off to the Kleylehof, a collection of old huge barns 6km away where some artists have built working and showing and living spaces, and a couple others where it would appear that they still farm the land around there. These concerts were to start around 2:30 PM, but they wait till after 3:00 so people have time to have afternoon wine spritzers, beer and coffee with parsley and herb bread slices garnished variously with cheese spreads/slabs, salamis, eggs, lengthwise gherkin slices, green olives etc. The concerts took place in a concrete floored, empty rectangular cavern with movable wood risers against the small wall and scattered loose benches around the middle.

Tilbury played solo in the dark, with the only light coming through the curtained door, and enough people moving and walking and twittering that the grey light that made its way inside hit the wall directly behind his back (he faced the right) kept moving. Constant fluctuations of grey in different degrees behind him. Music was overwhelming and pure despite tons of peripheral sounds (babies, shoes on ground shifting, cameras rewinding [thanks DW!], walking, rolling of cigarettes [thanks guy in front of me!]) and it was fucking marvelous how actually none of those sounds detracted from the music. It wasn't like Tilbury interacted with them or incorporated them into the playing -- they were just a constant presence that fit into everything he was doing. Lovely. Lovely. He wore a semi-shiny grey suit and black t-shirt. I had sat in a hammock in the sun beforehand.

Afterward I walked down to one of the (I'm assuming) farm buildings and found a big pile of old harvested corn and two deer chilling out in the field. And a huge barn that was completely open on both sides so you could see right through to the sunny yellow field beyond, framed by the black of the building itself. Went back to take a photo the next day and one side of that door had been shut. Dwight went back to take a photo of some wheat on Monday after the fest and the field had been cut. It felt like nothing was changing, but it was, it was.

Second set on Saturday afternoon at the Kleylehof was Tony Buck (drums), Manfred Hofer (acoustic and electric bass) and Hannes Loschel on piano. This was actually the first set to bring me to unexpected sonic nirvana. Felt higher listening to this set than I had in the previous 20 months of listening to music. Tony Buck just whooped me. Hofer's simple (and I mean very simple) electric bass taps (held like Rowe's guitar, but actually on his lap) worked into some heavy heavy rhythmic fucking. Loschel's playing was weird as fuck, like he was doing everything he could to avoid banging out the hard chords and strong articulations that the rhythm was edging him towards, and though others found it irritating or disappointing, I was just startled at how it all sounded together. And especially when Loschel did chip in to enrich the rhythmic counterpoint and play, it just sounded fucking angelic and transporting: the pianist had kept back for so long that (still playing mind you, but just not allowing the intensity of the oblong rhythmic march below him to sway his awkward ways) that when he gave in it just made the whole room go purpley red and floaty for me like I had to be careful or I was going to lift off. I did not exist physically at those moments. Buck played inside and outside some of the coolest fucking rhythms -- really snapping a couple of beats in a cycle and then playing the next cycle the same way but leaving out what you then discovered to be the crucial beat so that it walloped you on the head with its silence. Manipulative smacker. With a mini-broom. And sometimes a stick. And Hofer. Playing one bass string slowly and deadeningly monotonally with only slight little fingerslips or twitches (purposeful or not, they made big purposes out of the music) that were steady and reliable and somehow quite full of instigation for the movement of the music and the musicians. Almost arcanely monotonous at times and somehow arrayed with tons of tangential flavor. That set really got me.

We walked out and it was dark everywhere at 5 o'clock and it was raining and we started moving immediately to the car and it started raining heavier and we were freaking out about what was still outside the tent back at the camp, and I was wondering where my tennis shoes were outside the tent and ohmygod the best five sets in a row of the festival were coming up and you can't let it rain now god! Damngod. (Especially since the other two times I had been to this festival it was rain-drenched, almost completely. And according to festival-goers, those were "the only" times it had ever rained at the 25 year long festival. Please Damngod don't make me the curse!)

But we got back to the tent, took care of everything, put on our rain jackets, got to the Jazzgalerie and sat down for dinner. I had the pepper steak with carrots and green beans (yes! w/ bacon!) and potatoes covered all in a rich thick mushroom and wine sauce -- big old gigantic steak, which I knew I would need to get me through the evening (even eventually having three more salt sandwiches… hey!) A fine fucking meal. (I saw Mats eating the same steak plate the next night and knew that he was on the right track with the right attitude). It was the most expensive dish on the menu and the fullest plate; but sometimes you know you're gonna need a lot of steak.

Oh yah, and the rain ended and the sun came back out and everything felt refreshed before we were even done eating and there was no more rain all weekend. Whoopchaw!

Next up, the heart of it: Saturday evening, July 23, 2005, Nickelsdorf, Austria -- the Jazzgalerie.

So it begins w/ Sten Sandell (piano + voice) Johann Berthling (doublebass) Paal Nilsson-Love (drums): the Sten Sandell trio. Though I thought Sten might bring his electronics out considering their surprise appearance on the trio's last record, it was an all-acoustic showdown of piano slapping and drum tinkling and bass crunging. An absolutely ferocious set for the 7 o'clock hour. Sten tapped and popped the side and all over the inside of the piano as is his wont, burst forth with several vocal tones -- often held, pure pitches that disappear like they're falling down a well, which he follows up with a mean bang on the piano keys. As Dmitri says, he needs a longer keyboard, maybe 212 keys or something. He spends so much time on the very ends of the piano and a little in the middle, but almost none in between those areas. Just the ends of the spectrum, and outside the ends of the spectrum, slapping and fingerpopping the literal sides and insides of the instrument. Boisterous dense madness under control like group sex amongst psychologists. Paal would hear Sten get stuck on a pianotone and Paul would mimic it with a drumstick and a piece of metal folded just so. Sten egged him on, luring him deeper and deeper into the resonance between the sounds and then once it got to be one throbbing organism of like tones, he would reel back, hiss between his teeth and go tap-a-tap-a-tap happy all over the glossy lacquer of the piano's skin. Paal had to bite his nails to check the pulse of his bones. Percussy reactions from everywhere. I couldn't see Berthling but he sounded thickly in the midst of it all with that bass, damn good and took a couple of rugged solos.

Corkestra was next up for the evening transition and they brought 8 folks on stage to hammer out some tunes. Fuhler was funky as fuck, I don't know how he gets such a light bouncy touch out of his organ and yet still remains deeply groovy while showing almost no signs of funk-feeling in his body. Both percussionists had great moments during this set. While it was very nice and pleasant, it rarely rose to greatness for me. Whereas Sten's trio plateaud there and just rested and went horseback riding and swimming and canoeing on excellence, Corkestra seemed to be regularly on the verge of it, but never or rarely able to make that final group push needed to reach an ecstatically twisted transcendence. Even though it was a very nice set and Toby Delius had a wonderful sax solo, it was probably the only set I could say that "disappointed" me. This probably also has to do with the very high expectations I had for this one, and also the fact that their inclusion on the roster was the signal for me that I had to go because Hans was paying attention to exactly the things I was paying attention to this year (as if he ever isn't.) They did do some nice re-workings of songs from this year's disc and had some stellar moments of rich compositional flowering, but I kept waiting for the set to start blazing a trail into my willing epidermis and ears, but instead it just kept going and then was over.

Good thing the next set started out with the most sophisticated improvising I have ever witnessed. John Butcher, Paul Lovens and Steve Beresford are longtime masters, each with a highly developed style, and who had never played together in this combination. I literally had my brain fall out of my mouth listening to the first 10 minutes of this set, the music was just so goddamn well-articulated and interacted upon/with/through. Communication and improvisation on an almost impossibly clear and abstract level. My favorite set of the festival pure music-wise. I just could not believe what I was hearing. Even though there had been other sets that were completely improvised during the festival, this was the first by a non-working band, i.e. by musicians who rarely if ever play together, and the glorious result of how volatile and hypersensitive they were to each other, having to listen to everything because they can't expect anything and don't know each other's habits. I left utterly awed by the acquisition of even higher levels of respect for each of those three musicians. I felt like it was a real showcase of what dedication makes possible. Equal to the best improvising and best music-making I have ever witnessed.

The Thing opened up with a White Stripes song (so Mats announced afterwards "that was the old jazz standard by The White Stripes, here's another jazz classic by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs" -- apparently these are popular rock songs). One thing is for sure, I would bet my left leg on the fact that whoever wrote those songs doesn't play them with 1/3 the intensity that this bari sax, doublebass and drums trio throws at the audience. Case in point: they all had on black t-shirts that said "RUBY'S BBQ" which had a drawing of a cow's skull on a desert prairie on the back. (Needless to say, I was very surprised to find out at 5 AM that night that both the bass player and drummer are vegetarians, and Mats had insisted that they get the shirts.) So they took the rock songs and screamed into them, just pounding the pulp and nerve out of (into?) those tunes. The only way to listen to a band that comes at you with such aesthetically justified force is to squeeze your face into all sorts of shapes that make you open your mouth like your screaming or wince your nose like you're a filthy snob at Kmart and embrace these positions. Now shake your head back and forth, and froth from the lungs. Gigantic small-combo jazz. Sleazy. Mighty mighty screaming sweat. You can feel it in your shoulders afterwards, all that jazz sleaze.

Oh boy, oh boy, party band. A decent amount of old timers left before the next set even started. Hell, it didn't start till 2:30 AM. The best visual clue was that the band was called Trio Exklusiv, they were listed as having four guys in the band, and when they set up on stage they had five -- one drummer, one conga player with a huge 70s mustache, a guy on guitar and saxes, another guy on vocals and trumpet, and another guy on guitar. Maybe one of them played bass too. It was funky groovy and totally easy listening after the day of music. Horns were tight, rock and roll was happening. I was jamming along in my seat, doing some chair dancing when I got up to get some bottled beers for us all (the tall ones). By the time I had four sips of this beverage from my seat I couldn't stand it anymore and went over to the left of the stage, took off my long-sleeve shirt, put my beer down, and started cutting up the carpet (which in this case were 1 square foot stones that were anything but flat.) It was the place where we had danced our asses off to Tipper Gore 4 years before and I started getting nasty. Mr. Krasnov was hot on my trail to the dance floor. By the time this song was over there were 40 more people dancing all over the audience than before I got up to get down. Trio Exklusiv played for an hour and a half, till 4 AM, finished off the 20 minute encore with the "I Dream of Jeannie" theme and had the entire rest of the audience sweating free jazz out of their teets. Young invisible microbial babies were lapping it up.

Several salt sandwiches were consumed as well as one liter of beer per set (though I took one set off so I could continue into the night unchecked) and several mineral waters. I can't remember what was playing in the bar for the late night crowd except for one thing -- you know that Saul Williams' track "Monkey Theme" off the Infesticons album? Somebody played the tune featuring the original drum and bass thing that was lifted to form the backbone of the Williams track and I sure as hell would like to know who it's by, but I had other things to jam about then -- but the rest of the stereo cuts were also juicy groovers. Damn good.

Sunday had a nice wakeup (I've forgotten to mention the absolutely freezing cold outdoor showers in the morning at the campsite, and all the various yodels and whelps people make as they dance through or hold themselves courageously underneath the water. As painful as these showers are -- I literally never caught my breath while taking one -- they really do help for the wakeup process) with a schnitzel for breakfast. Still a little ragged from the night before but we made it over to the Kleylehof for the afternoon shows. 1st set was Walter Malli on soprano sax and Oskar Aichinger on piano. Fine musicians I know but nothing diabolic or angelic in store I knew so I went up onto the felt stage at one end of the hall and laid down horizontally on my back for this set. I was worried that others would find my actions askew, but when I got up to clap there were 17 people horizontal on that stage, so I think it was a good idea. Oskar is incredibly short, drank a big glass of white wine while he played, and Malli had some nice notebending. Pleasant background for needed physical relaxation recovery.

The Paul Lovens / Martin Brandlmayer duo was up next and after wandering around and taking some pictures I went to the bathroom. I walked in and who should be washing his hands but Mr. Lovens himself. He said "I would dry my hands on one of the trees but there's too many to choose from" (there were no paper towels in the bathroom, but trees indeed in all directions around us in the fields' forests) .I used the bathroom, walked back, and at that moment they announced for people to come in so I went in and got a bench right at the front on Lovens' side. First off -- it's hard for me to write about my favorite musician in the world. Secondly, this was a drum battle goddammit by two full-fisted percussion monsters at 4 in the afternoon. Brandlmayer began a little tentatively, even noticeably mis-hitting some drums. Lovens gave him lots of room to add stuff and it made me think that Lovens must get a little weary of having to try to make people comfortable. The set was very good, but I think Lovens is a lot happier when he is surrounded by musicians that test and poke him rather than by musicians that creep around, trying to fit in with him. The two of them did eventually get into some very riplip beatslinging and also subtle thin wriggles, but the best stuff for me was when Lovens would pop slap dash hiccup boom then swizzle swizzle swizzle little squiggles out over the drum heads. I even spent an hour that afternoon during dinner trying to draw the squiggles, then I spent even more minutes the next couple of days drawing them. Swizzles that is. Sonically this set had a lot of great shit going for it, and even though it could have been more fiery, it was completely fucking enchanting and contained some outré stellar jerk dance jamming.

Went back to the Jazzgalerie and had some frogosch for dinner. Capercrazy frogosch. I always forget that the first band on Sunday starts right at 6 PM or 6:30 as opposed to all the other opening sets that start half an hour later than stated start time. So missed the very beginning of this band led by Marco Eneidi (alto sax) which had two bassists, a drummer and a guy on computer, maybe a DJ, I don't know. I was tired and essentially had my eyes shut and head down for this set. Didn't sleep, but just let the froth slip through. Unfortunately, it was mostly already-popped bubbles. Wilbert de Joode and the other bassist had some nice bass battles and rich chasings after each other, but as Dwight said "it sounded like every sound Eneidi made was the same." Who knows how he did it, but it was boring. He also insisted on an encore when the audience couldn't care less, and told all the musicians "really really fast OK. Really." and then he proceeded to play just like he had the whole time. I'm glad it was unengaging because I needed some rest from hyper-absorbing attention.

I moved over to a different seat for John Tilbury / Philip Wachsmann / Paul Lytton / Ken Vandermark set because I wanted to see Lytton's setup, which was a big bunch of metal pieces (like an adult erector set) with all sorts of shit hanging on it made out of different materials. He only had a couple of tiny drumheads and played primarily electronics, albeit percussively. Vandermark started on clarinet which was the right instrument choice, but he started out like he often does when free improvisation between musicians unaccustomed to each other is about to take place: he wants to do something but doesn't want to be obtrusive so he plays a long single note at different intensities. And then he repeats the note. This is very tiring. He did this at the beginning and it was embarrassing (probably because I'm used to it, but had forgotten about it, and then once it started I instantly remembered how common it used to be for the guy and was surprised he was still doing it.) Anyway, I quickly enough had my attention divested from Ken and listened to Lytton and Tilbury, and there was marvelous shit to be found in there. Lots of surreptitious milking and farm mechanics. Phil violined in with rodentary background omnipresence. Hay was pet, wind was light shifting attention on music. Eventually Ken even started finding a way to work with the musicians that didn't depend on the kind of direct interaction that says, "I hear what YOU are doing so I'M doing THIS!" and then "I HEAR YOU TOO! so THIS!" He actually did blend in very well and make some good stuff, especially later on in the set, during the second piece the ensemble played, where they all got into a pretty special eerily small place for about 20 minutes, kind of like 4 mosquitos trying to peel an orange -- smelling it, smelling it, sme-lling it, can they suck it? can they taste it? There were also some really raunchy moments from Tilbury that were basically elicited by Ken from a screechy clarinet blast that he kept rippling. Eventually Tilbury rolled his sleeves up and went pounding, Cecil-Taylor-heavy pounding on the keyboard and just bashed it around. I couldn't tell if he was having fun or just coping with the animous repetitions of squeak bursts from Vandy. Phil chimed in with violin pealing too and it was more shriek-fearing than anything else. Very peculiar music for these four. Much better when they settled into some abstract emotionally curative improv rather than the fake-jazz slammingThe encore was basically due to the huge applause at the end of these twenty minutes where they all played with each other with some scary funky grace and ability to let each other be their own freak without explicitly commenting on the freakiness to themselves or each other. A well-warranted encore, it took the interaction down even another notch and maintained barely perceptible mellowtones for a couple of minutes, and then everyone came to a soft pause, there was a silent beat and then the church down the road softly rang its bells, and everyone in the audience laughed and clapped and whooped since it was so fitting and calm an ending.

POW ensemble was a real highlight for me, and I had a Red Bull beforehand that I thought was doing nothing, but I think it worked considering that from the moment they took the stage around 9 PM or so I was flying until 9 AM. This band was one vocalist, one DJ (also on background vocals and amped rubber band), one computer guy, one tap dancer, and Luc Houtkamp on sax and computer. Supposedly there was somebody behind the soundboard doing sound design too. It did sound damn good so credit is hereby launched his way too. 1st tune was a solo vocal piece that found Han Buhrs with a microphone held up to various parts of his neck, throat and head and articulating some warbly burps, in English, of a Paul Blackburn poem about malfunctions and purple-colored semantic dilapidation blues. This transitioned to a saxophone tap dancing duet that was smoking blazing bad ass you-do-this and I'll-do-that like we're having a blues riff battle.

Total happiness -- evident and contagious -- on the tap dancer's part for this and everything she did throughout the set. It seemed like she was really happy to be involved with such a fucked up performance ensemble and to be appreciated for what she brought into it, and also loving what other people brought into it too. In fact all of the ensemble members seemed to have an astonishing amount of respect and interest and experience of real pleasure with what the other people brought to it (this was corroborated for me by talking to several of them individually afterward, where they said the music was developed really slowly over a long period of time and learning how to work with each other). So they worked supremely well together playing "songs riddles, poems and dances" -- a shitload of blues tunes and soul-flavored things that were just supremely fucked. You've got a tap dancer in the center of the stage, some clicking electronics, a DJ singing background chorus-girl type bass vocals to a blues dirge and a skronking sax or sample from some beaten railroad tie. Other highlights included a poem by Robert Filliou set to music, which talked about a homage in dance to that mammal "m" [yes the letter, er, mammal] and all sorts of animals and domesticated animals, and then would go through a list like "What testicles! What ovaries! What violence! What uterus! Begat the experienced bull (what chromosomes! What a brain! What a clitoris!) and the nocturnal fly" etc. etc. I suppose one's enjoyment of this poem depends on your enjoyment of linguistic patterns about animals and sexual evolution: "What copulation! What lips! What promiscuity! What penis!" which I loved. Apparently Dmitri and Dwight didn't dig this set too much, which I was totally blown away and transported by. Listening to it I just assumed that everyone was freaking out in enjoyment of this amazing insanity that was still so amazingly controlled and clear. This was the blues, for sure, and I got all painted up in it.

By the time that set was over, I was ready for my first drink of the evening. A scotch, and a beer. So I was ready for two drinks. I went to the bar got Dmitri a salt sandwich and a vodka and two Cragganmore scotches plus two beers for Dwight and I. All of my drinks were done by the time ZU + Mats Gustafsson came on, so I was onto my next beer and bought Dmitri another vodka and a beer. Dwight went to sit down, but there was no way I was going to be able to sit still since 1) the POW ensemble really lit me up and 2) I knew I was going to want to dance and shake to this set. And what was this set? ZU. An Italian trio. One/3rd: an electric bassist who moves like a humanoid tribute to all 1990s MTV speed-metal video vigilantes. Puts the I in DIY and the U in PUNK. Two/3rd: A drummer who covers his thin arms in tats and idolizes the convergence of mathematical nuthouse prog rock changes and stickslamming punk power. Three/3rd: A baritone saxophonist who keeps all the jagged rhythmic lines in check by popping out tight melodic patterns. And then you add Mats Gustafsson who just basically screams along to everything going on around him, trying to interact with every rhythm and every sound that every person does. A frightening feast. I wouldn't exactly say Dmitri and I were dancing to this, but we were back in a spot where we could see everything and still stand up and wiggle and shake and rock back and forth and basically contort our bodies into sponges for sucking in the music. We probably looked nasty. It was a fucking blast. ZU calls what they do soul music. And it is. It just sounds like hypercomposed punk jazz in 3 minute tunestretches. Perfect kind of band to show off Vandermark's best side: saxrock, so he joined the band for their last couple tunes and encores, so we had 3 baritone saxophones, an electric bassist and a drummer playing freakmetal. Freespeed freakmetal artpunk deathdirge squronk.

So that was all the music. Then I started drinking strongly and chatting with musicians and we went to the downstairs bar after an hour or two and a kid was DJing what sounded like the greatest funky hits from Black Saint records then a couple folks got on the dance floor and that was all I needed. It was time to cut that rug! Took off my shoes and socks and danced around Luc Houtkamp and an old Viennese woman I've seen at every festival, and then a bunch of folks that I hadn't seen the entire weekend. After a bit of this and chatting around I saw some of the kids who work the festival going upstairs so I just followed them and introduced myself and got high on a couple of hash joints out in the outside upstairs barn bar in the back. They got me drunk and I entertained them with American English (straight from the source!) so that they thought I was speaking popular slang, but I was really speaking choatespeak and convincing them that that was the new school of speech. A highlight: gabbing with an old wobbly short drunk afro'd dude who couldn't speak any English (and obviously my no-German-go) to entertain the kids. We actually liked each other and could understand the gist of everything perfectly, even though we knew we were sort of performing for people that actually knew (sort of) both our languages. After a couple hours of this they convinced me to go back downstairs and get my shoes (I wanted to dance again too) so I made my way down and accidentally stepped on some glass on the way, didn't really notice, or care to deal with it until I could get to my shoes and sit down and check it out, so I go downstairs and Mats Gusty is on the small stage down there pulling out his bari sax, and Tristan Honsinger is warming up his cello strings and an Italian woman is sitting on the stage, tapping her hard-bottomed shoe on the wooden stage and flaring up the accordion. I proceed to an available seat within 4 feet and notice that it's after 6 AM, there are only 30 people in the place, only 20 of them are conscious of what is going on, and my left foot has a huge blood splatter between the big and next biggest toe, where I had just pulled out a couple of pieces of glass. I wiggled everything back and forth, decided the foot damage was minimal and settled in for an hour long free jazz folk dirge. The woman sang old Italian folk melodies and Mats and Tristan layered fat swathes of microtonal drones on bari sax and cello. Dramatic as hell. When she took breaks off the accordion / vocal bellow (always still tapping her foot) we got the foot tap continuing (still mellowly tapping that thing) and Mats and Tristan broke out of the long tones and scraped up against each other all volatile pent up and drunk up. They got a little vicious and testy, and she was just sitting in front of them, tapping her foot (she was kind of sprawled sideways, so her foot was at an equal height to her torso along the stage, which was really only two steps high off the dance floor.) So there was tense frenetic improv dialogue crushing and mashing with the backbeat of the foot for a good twenty minutes and then she started the accordion up again and Mats and Tristan took that to be a cue to amp it up even more, but to play within the bloated microtones of the accordion chords, so they got louder and more devoted to the rhythm, then to bring it all to a big burst she started singing and barethroat gargantuan bellowing the folk song. That tune might have been a mourning melody for lost love or dead passion. That's really the only thing I can think she could have been singing about so passionate boisterous solemn and melancholically: the loss of passion. The trio crescendo-ed in tearful power. Needless to say, this set left everyone mowed. There was one guy that was giddy drunk and jumping in his chair afterward (one of the waiters in the restaurant), but it looked like the rest of us had just been ploughed out and emotionally eviscerated and we were smiling really brightly about it on the inside, which was just hintingly visible through our blasted exteriors.

I got my shoes back on, went back upstairs and back to where the kids were, told them about my foot, told them we needed some music back there, got some kid to go pull his car up, walked back to the tent, grabbed a Lyrics Born remix CD and a Trio Exklusiv album I picked up, walked back, smoking and drinking big bottled beers and started DJing with the car stereo in front of the barn bar and dancing. Eventually Toby's mom came up just to say hi and chat, and she recognized me from years before and he told her about my foot and she insisted that he go and help me take care of it and look at it. So then we went and got supplies out of the kitchen and went and sat on the front steps of the Jazzgalerie and I cleaned it with paper towels water and antiseptic and we realized the cuts were small, the blood had just splattered. So we cut some bandages, slipped my socks on etc. and rapped there for a while. Went back downstairs at some point where Tristan was still wearing his bright red fez and going up to each of the individual people still drinking (even awake?) downstairs and playing his cello personally for them. I got him to do a little dance and hop and sing for me, but I think I was too engaged an audience, like he wanted more of a challenge to woo people. [A reminder: Tristan has been playing this music and deeply embedded in this scene for 30 years. These were not the actions of a hyperactive neophyte. This was a goddamn legend winking and strutting with his instrument at 8 AM.] Eventually me and Toby walked around and rounded up my discs, unsuccessfully tried to find the notebook I had been using to write about the festival (and the airplane over, and in Hungary and Vienna beforehand, and all the linguistic fun and games that normally make up my writing oh well) and I started wandering home, where I got the hiccups while walking, big cracking hiccups and got to the tent, laid down boomhiccuping in the tent, realized that wasn't going to work, stuck my head out of the tent, threw up the ridiculous cola and tequila and vodka and mineral water cocktail {yes that was one cocktail, I don't know what I was thinking when I made it} then fell softly to sleep. Slept wonderfully until 3 in the afternoon when Dmitri and Dwight woke me up and told me to get get up because we were going to Slovenia. Great. I didn't feel too bad. Got myself together enough and we packed it all up, went back to the Jazzgalerie (one last check for my notebook) walked around, found a big case of mineral water, grabbed a huge one, found Hans sitting on the bench smoking with his shirt off and a tall girl in a black dress next to him staring at the stage where all the music had just happened. We said goodbye, he called me to him and I gave him a big hug and we left the Jazzgalerie, and the doors were bolted behind us. We drove to the other restaurant in town, a pizza joint, where Dwight ordered big beers for us all "because Andrew needs it, Dmitri wants it, and I have to have it." I had a spinach pizza, Dmitri had ham pizza and Dwight got a chicken schnitzel. Then we started driving to Slovenia.

The amazing thing about Nickelsdorf is that you can see people believing in what they do to an extent that you have never seen before. And when that happens to coincide with one of the only things I believe in, you see why the place would keep drawing me back. Very hard to resist such a place that is full of the music that is not only close to my heart, but that has had such a great amount of influence over the shape of my heart.

~ Andrew Choate

~ Photographs by Dmitri Krasnov and James Tudor

Posted by achoate on October 5, 2005 2:43 PM