Defibrillator & Peter Brötzmann: Conversations About Not Eating Meat

Imagine the fight posters we could create for the various musical boxing matches organized for saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. His profile picture would be facing a fellow competitor with all the relevant statistics—height, weight, reach, and age. The boxing poster image often comes to mind when he grapples with plugged-in artists and those dealing with electronics, as we have here.

His newest collaborations signal a bit of a shift from the now defunct Chicago Tentet, to spread his sound into various satellite outfits, duos with Heather Leigh, Jason Adasiewicz, or Peeter Uuskyla, trios with Steve Swell and Paal Nilssen-Love or John Edwards and Steve Noble, and also a renewed interest in solo performance.

With Defibrillator, the great man squares off against drummer Oliver Steidle (Peter Van Huffel's The Scrambling Ex), the e-trombone of Sebastian Smolyn and the electronics of Artur Smolyn. The poster would read Brötzmann, height: 5'9," weight: heavyweight, reach: all genres, age: eternal.

There is, of course, the obligatory noise here, and by noise I mean the convergence of heavy weights. The thunderous electronics of both Smolyns act as a wall of sound on the opener "Anthropozoophilia," which Brötzmann endeavors to blow down. Same for "Fuckir," which comes at the ears more like Keiji Haino's guitar than a trombone sound. Steidle's hardcore free drumming lays down a thick emollient layer of vibration. But he also applies a salve of brushes and ticks to a piece like "Uterine Prolapse," which opens with Brötzmann's plaintive call. The eerie soundscape that follows equates to a post- apocalypse soundtrack. For all the burn and tumble of "The Man With One Ball," there is a bluesy touch to "Cellulite Guru" with Sebastian Smolyn's e-trombone solo inviting Brotzmann to deliver a fire brand sermon on the album's knockout collaborative centerpiece.