Kammerflimmer berlin 05/07/2007

Whispering, a laid back pop rhythm and something that sounds like an overwound gramophone – thus begins "Jinx", the new album by the Kammerflimmer Kollektief. Recorded by Tobias Levin at Electric Avenue Studio, it is their sixth longplayer. This band is still a "collective", although within the last years and extensive touring through Europe, a group of three core members emerged from the original line-up: Thomas Weber (guitar, electronics, piano), Heike Aumüller (harmonium, vocals, synthesizer, percussion) and Johannes Frisch (double bass and percussion). The eight songs on "Jinx" leave the wide-screen cinemascope soundscapes of the previous albums behind. With their serenity, these songs sound almost like a sediment of the band's earlier approach. This becomes evident in a track like "Nest" (which is reminiscent of the folk-jazz-approach of early Pentangle albums), or the beautifully minimalist yet very touching country-epic "Live At The Cactus Tree Motel". Faced with this music, the usual groping for stylistic comparisons and genre attributions appears more helpless than ever. This is mainly due to the focused use of instrumental improvisation on this album. In their dialogue with the sound impulse, the musicians re-endow data folk with a body and electronic music with its metaphysics. This becomes evident in both the title track and in "Both Eyes Tight Shut", where in a repetitive swing Heike Aumüller's voice persistently fishes half-words from the vortex of sound particles. In "Gammler, Zen & Hohe Berge", a tiny echo from the beat on a small wood block which is electronically slowed down, dies away. Time drips through the spheres, quietly. This is not an escape into esotericism but rather the attempt at reflection and clarification, a catharsis somewhere between a constructed reality.