Paul Lovens | Florian Stoffner: Tetratne

German drummer Paul Lovens' distinguished career within European free jazz / improvising circles is well-documented. Generally speaking, he's performed with a who's who of futurists and others who tend to stretch the limits of standard musical regimens. On this outing he partners with Swiss experimental guitarist Florian Stoffner for an interconnection of spurious ideas in front of an audience in Ljubljana at the 2019 "Sound Disobedience Festival."

Thanks to a crystalline soundstage the slightest details are heard amid the interwoven dialogues, complete with bizarre treatments and free form micro- themes. With the guitarist's odd tunings, noise effects and the drummer's booming bass drum hits, deft cymbals work and offbeat digressions, the duo works as a team via evolutionary processes and non-linear motifs, where time is divided into segments. Moreover, Lovens often takes on the role of traffic director, complemented by a radiantly shaded alien dichotomy.

On "Tetratne 3," Stoffner's de-tuned phrasings and strings scraping maneuvers help generate a fractured pulse in concert with Lovens' swift rimshots, crashing cymbals and echoey bass drum patterns, leading to the former's eerie subliminal lines and fast strumming, consolidated into countless peaks and valleys. But the following track "Tetratne 4" initially appears to be semi-conventional, akin to a folk jazz type ballad, followed by deconstruction activities and temperate phases resulting in a piece that elicits far-flung notions of an extraterrestrial pop song, countered by human neural responses. And on subsequent listens it's a good bet the listener will never hear the same configurations twice. Otherwise, it seems appropriate that legendary free jazz British sax hero Evan Parker penned the liner notes.

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