A Bunch of Peter Brötzmann Videos: Part Two
Now we move on to the second part of the 1974 improvised performance, which picks up where the last one left off.
Old Brötzy has his clarinet a-wailing while Kovald responds with some of his stylistically abrasive bassities. As Kovald cleans plucks away the broken and shredded strings from his bow, Brötzmann begins to deconstruct his clarinet and using his hands as a wah to get some more interesting clarinet noises. First he takes off the bottom part, then he goes on to remove the top part as well while still playing the mouthpiece. He plays some really sick stuff during the deconstruction while the band carries on the song in its usual state of ear shattering cacophony but this time, Schlippenbach's piano increases its dramatic flair.
Brötzmann hops back onto the sax after his interlude with the clarinet, and he starts to do some fantastic call and response improvisations (while it's kind of a basic idea for improvisation, many artists use it to great advantage) with Schlippenbach. All of these men are fantastic musicians, but it's clear that Brötzmann and Schlippenbach are in it to steal the show. More jimp-jumpy free jazz goes along and Schlippenbach starts to play his piano with a drumstick. There's nothing really noticably different when he does this, it just sounds like he's pounding down on a section of keys. There is one part where he does some very fast drumming and there's this clattering noise that coincides with his drumming, but then the camera switches over to Lovens playing a cymbal on his snare in a similar pattern. So I'm at a loss on who's making that noise, but that's free jazz for you.
Brötzmann takes a breather from the sax while the rest of the band does some more of the dramatic trade-off playing. I have no idea what Lovens is playing on his drums, but it looks like some kind of building material. Whatever it is, it's the best nontraditional addition to the kit in this performance. Schlippenbach kicks some ass on the piano for a few until Kovald takes the stage with a solo. It's more of the all-over-the-place grinding screechy bass that we hear throughout the rest of the show, but this does seem a little more focused. Maybe I'm just saying that because it's him solo and no on else is there to steal the spotlight. Lovens joins in on the drums by scraping his sticks together with one on the drum, making some pretty interesting noises that I think I might put in my pocketbook for personal use (any MB drummers know if there's a term for this technique?).
The video ends on the bass solo segment while Brötzmann starts to join in, but before he can get more than a few notes out, the show was cut for the third part, which I will be covering in my next post. I prefer this one to the first part, if only because it's more diverse.
Oh yeah, and here's another f
ucking painting. This one's by Giorgio de Chirico called The Archaologists:
.jpg)