Berlin-based Ignaz Schick began his musical career as a sax player in free jazz and avant-rock bands under the mentorship of trumpeter Don Cherry, before becoming a turntablist, sound and visual artist. Fellow-Berliner, jazz drummer Oliver Steidle is known from the bands Klima Kalima, Der Rote Bereich and Oli Steidle & the Killing Popes. Schick and Steidle began collaborating as the Ilog duo around 2013 and recorded their debut, self-titled album in December 2014 (boomslang, 2015). Since then the duo toured all over Europe and collaborated with Norwegian bass hero Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten, German sound artist Jan-Peter Sonntag, American and fellow-Berliner trumpeter Liz Albee and Australian double bass player Mike Majkowski. The sophomore «ILOG2» was recorded in Berlin in August 2020 and is released on Schick’s label, Zarek.
«ILOG2» suggests a more refined and subtle approach to the art of turntablism plus drums, contrasting the restless and intense noisy cut-ups of «ILOG», but, still, quite an eccentric and mischievous one. Schick and Steidle take hip-hop, techno, dubstep and house techniques, and both are clearly well-versed with these dance-oriented genres, and transform the rhythmic tools and smart quotes into elusive non-idiomatic, free-improvisation meets noise textures. These multilayered textures shed a fresh and ironic look on the overly macho DJ’s schools of music and the often cerebral modes of free-improvisation, stripping all from familiar clichés.
The stormy opening of «ILOG2» states «Fuck the DJ» on the hyperactive deconstruction of hip-hop misogynistic quotes and samples of «There is no escaping». You may need advanced acrobatic skills to dance along with this piece, or on the like-minded «This is not a love song» and «In Your Face». But, later on, «Using the secret», «Spanish ghetto music brat» and «And the day never went away», Schick and Steidle offer evocative, cinematic narratives comprised of nuanced and multilayered abstract noises, fragmented and heavily processed rhythmic patterns and clever samples. «Dog on the edge» collides tortured sax sounds with cartoonish beats, while «The dominant force» expands the monotonicity of jungle breakbeats with abstract noises and a more playful pulse. Schick and Steidle even trip with «Flying Saucer» in distant, chilled-out atmospheres.
Eyal Hareuveni
Ignaz Schick (turntables, voltage-controlled sampler, looper, pitch shifter), Oliver Steidle (dr, perc, sampler, kaosspad)
