Beins/Bosetti/Dorner/Krebs/Neumann/Renkel/Schick: Phosphor

If I were clinically insane, I would articulate my beliefs in the profound significance of the post-minimal abstract sounds created by this creative collaboration. The mostly whispered interplay of these musicians spark thought and reflection from parts of the minds eye (or ear) that is beyond rational thought and common practice.

The folks at the French label Potlatch continue to deliver stellar improvisational music. Phosphar is a cooperative effort of musicians living in Berlin, plus Italian saxophonist Alessandro Bosetti. Axel Dorner who has collaboarated with the likes of Alexander von Schlippenbach, Chris Burn, Mats Gustafsson and Butch Morris processes his trumpet through a machine until any resemblance of its' sound to that of a trumpet is the stuff of a forensic investigation. Likewise, Bosetti and Robin Hayward's horns surface only in a fleeting glimpse as ghosts, or better yet memories. Their ‘music' isn't music as much as acoustic and electronic manipulations of sound. Sure that is also what music is, but these artists choose disquiet over harmony, not through clamor or cacophony. Andrea Neumann's piano-insides are the stripped bared guts which once more are filtered through a computer. What is delivered and processed by Ignaz Schick is a machine-logic, the stuff of spacecrafts silently running in the absolute quiet of deep-space. The sounds and reverberations created here are the switching on and off of machines, the hum of generators, and the pulse of a post-2001 landscape. It all means nothing, yet it touches on our precarious human condition.