What would curious, otherworldly birds make out of this planet’s schizophrenic noises and doomsday rhythms? The Nordic trio Teeth attempts to offer an imaginative answer to this existential koan. Teeth are Danish keyboards player Anders Filipsen, known from local groups as The Firebirds, Travelling Tribes and Kresten Osgood Trio, Norwegian drummer and fellow-Copenhagen resident Håkon Berre, known from the Mighty Mouse trio and his collaboration with reeds player Maria Faust and Aram Shelton, and Swedish, Malmö-based Herman Müntzing who plays on home-made instruments and objects, who collaborates with sax player Martin Küchen in the duo Scheibenhonig.
Teeth was founded four years ago but Filipsen, Berre and Müntzing took their time before recording their debut album. These three inventive and resourceful improvisers searched and developed patiently the trio’s organic yet quite anarchistic interplay, polishing its singular sonic palette with many vintage electronic instruments and devices and through improvised performances. This rare and thorough process paid off. Teeth sounds like nothing you have heard before. You may imagine an alien organism that sends urgent messages to the desperate earthlings, teasing and testing the limited attention span of Earth’s human beings and their capabilities to decipher eccentric auditive textures.
The nine soundscapes-salutations from these mad scientists from deep space don’t try to follow any earthly convention, structure or logical narrative. Instead Teeth invests in risky ideas, extreme and provocative dynamics, uneven rhythmical structures and scruffy landscapes and accidentally even contribute a possible anthem to the surprised earthlings, «Shout Out (to…)». Teeth may have solved its existential koan and is willing to lend us the keys to the doors of perception. «Open UP» is about the sonic magic that happens when we listen not only with our ears, big and open as they may be. Listen when we surrender fully to these weird but fascinating sounds, with our whole selves, when our imagination runs free, fearless and careless.
Try it in your home, in nature, at work, everywhere. Doomsday may be just around the corner, but it sounds amazing.
Eyal Hareuveni
Anders Filipsen (Juno 60, Roland JP-8000, Korg Mono-poly, pedals); Hermann Müntzing (DJ mixer, rhythm wolf, gakken, flexibox, voice, contact microphones); Håkon Berre (dr, cymbals, Korg Electribe, bow, contact mic, rec)
