Pool Position at PANDA Platforma

Nikolaus Neuser already made a splendid racket with Udo Schindler in Munich in May 2022 (“Free Syntax,” “Rhapsodic Topologies”). But he had been blasting Munich ears even earlier, in February 2021, at Spielraum für aktuelle Musik @ Schwere Reiter with POOL POSITION—that is, together with Silke Eberhard, who had only just fascinated me in the Tekk Trio with Jörg Schippa, and Sunk Pöschl, drummer in the ICI Ensemble, an old hand from Ignaz Schick’s Decollage 3, and a troublemaker with Ein Gschlößl Pöschl with Cavenati.

With restrained tooting and silky quacking, The Munich Concert (TITE-REC 030) sets off, with ticklish stick-work, rustling textures, and thudding, rolling blows. Soon the blaring horns are jostling for pole position, in a musical rivalry that, instead of speed, puts all its faith in the blue note and inventiveness. Pöschl crackles, fiddles, clicks, and crashes; Neuser snarls, blows, slurps; Eberhard goes “wah-wah” and prefers to chew on a dark cloud. Yet the trumpet draws her over to its radiant side in a sonorous matte sheen—where they then cantankerously honk at one another....

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Nikolaus Neuser already made a splendid racket with Udo Schindler in Munich in May 2022 (“Free Syntax,” “Rhapsodic Topologies”). But he had been blasting Munich ears even earlier, in February 2021, at Spielraum für aktuelle Musik @ Schwere Reiter with POOL POSITION—that is, together with Silke Eberhard, who had only just fascinated me in the Tekk Trio with Jörg Schippa, and Sunk Pöschl, drummer in the ICI Ensemble, an old hand from Ignaz Schick’s Decollage 3, and a troublemaker with Ein Gschlößl Pöschl with Cavenati.

With restrained tooting and silky quacking, The Munich Concert (TITE-REC 030) sets off, with ticklish stick-work, rustling textures, and thudding, rolling blows. Soon the blaring horns are jostling for pole position, in a musical rivalry that, instead of speed, puts all its faith in the blue note and inventiveness. Pöschl crackles, fiddles, clicks, and crashes; Neuser snarls, blows, slurps; Eberhard goes “wah-wah” and prefers to chew on a dark cloud. Yet the trumpet draws her over to its radiant side in a sonorous matte sheen—where they then cantankerously honk at one another.

The trio crumbles the sound world into percussive and noisy shorthand, ranging from timid to comic, into melodic wistfulness and Pöschl-fueled ruckus, before it culminates in an alpine fanfare glow that trembles under its own force. Eberhard whirls the triad into united clatter and furiously ignited fireworks, which only gradually subside into flickering melodic bliss. Once more, shell-rustling, tooting, quacking, popping fragments and pockets of air follow, ending melancholically in a pit stop. Even the pit babes hold their breath for a moment.

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