Hans Koch - London Duos and Trios

Hans Koch
London Duos and Trios
Intakt
081

I first heard Koch on his initial release for ECM, “Acceleration”, around the time of its release in 1988. It was a pretty attention grabbing effort, combining some motoric, surging themes sporting an almost punk edge with spirited free improvising. Aside from his appearance in Barry Guy’s New Orchestra a couple of years ago, he’d fallen off my radar however so I was a bit intrigued to hear this collection, to discover where he’d explored since then.

Well, he’s certainly moved on a bit. This is a series of nine improvisations recorded in late 2000 with members of the London improvising community, about equally divided between those who fall slightly on the jazzier side of things (just slightly) and several with feet planted more in eai territory. Koch wields soprano sax, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet, going up against the likes of Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Steve Noble, John Edwards and Roger Turner of the former allegiance and Phil Durrant, Mark Wastell and Rhodri Davies of the latter. To the extent that trouble brews here, it usually derives from Koch himself. He often seems reluctant to sink himself into the proceedings, either noodling about to no great effect with his partners (in the case of the duos with Thomas and Turner) or overriding their quieter, more group-oriented ideas (Wastell). In the latter, Koch appears to begin with the best of intentions, though even here he falls back on the breath tones that are generally the first refuge of reed players confronted with the difficult situation of “depersonalizing” their sound. As though feeling the need to progress to other sound areas, he migrates to the sort of squawks and bleats that one has heard hundreds of times (while Wastell and Davies, true to form, continue to play marvelously and imaginatively beside him, creating a wonderful, if brief, continuo right near the end of their track). It’s not that he falls back on free jazz clichés; he rarely does. Rather, he seems to have a limited palette of sounds to use in lieu of a “traditional” attack and doesn’t even get so much out of those (unlike, say, the ability shown by Stephane Rives of his recent solo disc on Potlatch, “Fibres”, where a given mode of attack was investigated with a merciless obsession). Happily, there are exceptions. The trio with Noble and Edwards has much of the clattery abandon one might expect, Koch’s claustrophobic, high-end wheezing playing off rather nicely against his companions’ more expansive, lower rumblings. And the penultimate track, a lovely exchange with harpist Davies comes as close as anything to the potential one might have anticipated coming into the project, causing one to rue many of the earlier pieces. Davies, as is almost always the case, manages to tightrope between tonal and abstract with delicious perversity while Koch at long last reins himself in a notch and glides along with his partner, finally creating a performance where the music itself is perceived before the individual musicians.

Overall, I get the perception that, as valiant as the effort was, Koch might be better served by more structured surroundings, something like Guy’s tentet where the robust framework allows for (encourages, even) more extravagant, extroverted playing. Some good playing here, perhaps more often by the supporting characters than the lead, but too much that’s simply unmemorable and not very finely observed or considered.

~ Brian Olewnick