Hans Kennel Mytha - How it All Started

hatOLOGY 648

Here’s one well suited to testing the mettle of your loyal Hat subscriber. A free jazz trumpeter in the bands of Steve Lacy and others, Hans Kennel’s means of musical expression in this case is the alphorn, that hoary Swiss wind instrument featured prominently in Ricola cough drop ads as the province of strapping Aryan lads clad in lederhosen. Ungainly in the extreme, Kennel and his colleagues somehow make it sing across a program that encompasses everything from chamber music to hints of New Orleans second line. The disc collects material from two earlier Hat Art releases in freshly scrubbed Peter Pfister sound.

Reaching conclusions about the music, I found myself ruminating on Brian’s recent Axel Dörner review. Kennel expresses thoughts similar to what I think Brian was getting at when he recounts his initial frustrations with the instrument. Kennel kept trying to concoct means to expand its pitch capabilities: Devising a valve system, experimenting with embouchure and breathing variations, etc. In the end he came to appreciate its limitations, basically to accept it as an alphorn. Kennel accomplished his goal of expanding the pitch dimensions by simply adding differently sized horns to create an ensemble. The moral of the story being, I suppose, that sometimes it’s perfectly fine for an instrument to sound like itself and all the effort expended in trying to make it into something else can end up a Sisyphean enterprise.

Varying between three and five in number, Kennel’s alphorn choir creates haunting and often hypnotizing music. The giant wooden horns sound vaguely like trombones and that superficial similarity reminds me a little of the Four Trombones project on Mingus’ Debut label, though the musical circumstances are wildly dissimilar. A closer connection is probably Ray Anderson’s Slide Ride quartet, though again, the players here are working within much more narrowly defined roles and zones. Rondos and drones factor heavily in the layered interplay, as do harmonics and overlapping rhythms. Fanfare-like swells are another regular facet to the compositions, the horns rising and receding in undulating swathes of sound. The compositions are primarily originals, but also incorporate traditional Swiss tunes (cousins to some of Ayler’s root themes) and even a Moondog cover, he an avid alphorn advocate. Kennel seems to delight in constructing challenging contrapuntal passages as during the snowballing alphorn action on “Habarigani”.

In addition to the alphorn phalanx, Kennel also employs the Büchel, a smaller higher register variant, to further vary the pitch field and even a bit of flugelhorn. The speech-like qualities of the instruments coupled with the frequent use of polyphonics bring to mind the aquatic sonorities of whale song. At nearly eighty minutes, it’s a lot to digest and probably best parceled into halves, or smaller portions. Consumed in this manner, the music often borders on the sublime and as a whole it heralds Hat’s unerring commitment to releasing creative music independent of listener preconceptions.

~ Derek Taylor