Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Koch-Schutz-Studer with Shelley Hirsch: Walking and Stum...

4

Koch-Schutz-Studer with Shelley Hirsch: Walking and Stumbling Through Your Sleep

Koch-Schutz-Studer with Shelley Hirsch: Walking and Stumbling Through Your Sleep
The Swiss improvising trio has made its distinctive footprint for Switzerland-based Intakt Records, also featuring projects based on collaborations with notable musicians, spanning various genres. Here, fabled New York City improvising vocalist Shelley Hirsch imparts her flippant and wily vocal clarity, prowess and passion. Vastly experimental and skirting the perimeters of avant rock and tiny elements of chamber, the ensemble's unique instrumentation also lends well to the improvisational component, spiced with wild and sometimes zany electronics permutations. Essentially, abstract sounds appear, intersect, and disintegrate throughout the program.

If there ever was a piece that brought a nightmarish dream to light in vivid colors and horrific environs, it's "L. Russolo's Nightmare" that hits the mark. Here, drummer Fredy Studer launches a death-metal like backbeat amid Martin Schutz's steely and bizarre electric cello lines as Hirsch harmonizes atop the dissonant and foreboding frameworks. Designed with harrowing choruses, sparking ghostly apparitions in the background, the group executes a slow-moving and rather megalomaniacal outline, shaded by Hans Koch's droning sax parts. It's a daunting proposition via fractured and streaming electronics parked within a halls-of-doom vista, as Hirsch also instills imagery of engaging in paranormal activities or serving as a medium to the other side. Sure enough, it's a lucid nightmare exposed. As history dictates, the core trio is good at these things and other sojourns that are unbounded by logic. They wreak havoc on one's neural system, but in a good way.

Track Listing

Personnel

Shelley Hirsch: voice and lyrics; Hans Koch: reeds and electronics; Martin Schutz: 5-string electric cello, cello and electronics; Fredy Studer: drums and percussion

Album information

Title: Walking and Stumbling Through Your Sleep | Year Released: 2013 | Record Label: Intakt Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.