TRAINING is the German, Berlin-based duo of reed player Johannes Schleiermacher and drummer and electronics player Max Andrzejewski, operating as a training ground for musical freedom, ecstasy, and spirituality. GruppenTRAINING is TRAINING’s fourth album, based on a series of five performances from 2023, when the duo expanded its collective sound with different line-ups of guest musicians from the Berlin free music scene.
GruppenTRAINING features twelve guest musicians. It was produced by TRAINING in a meticulous, detail-obsessed process lasting a full year, edited with material from the five performances, and mastered by Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich.
GruppenTRAINING imagines an awakening from a meditative state of mind into a psychedelic kaleidoscopic trip. It is a sonic melting pot that is a colourful, sizzling, bubbling, and glowing stream of energetic musical collisions and entanglements that forge ever-surprising paths. The structure of GruppenTRAINING is flexible and fast-shifting, but never loses its focus and urgent and powerful collective sensibility.
You can find in this ecstatic sonic melting pot the Ayler-ian sax screams of Schleiermacher and the manic drumming of Andrzejewski, the sound of Korean gongs of Hyo Jin Shin and Bo-Sung Kim’s, the primal bass scream of Dan Peter Sundland, Rieko Okuda’s trance-like piano, Els Vandeweyer’s audiophile vibes expeditions, Gregoire Simon’s prepared spectral viola, Mike Majkowski’s shimmering endless resonances of the double bass, Helena Weinstock’s fluttering and Oliver Roth’s tumbling flutes, Andreas Arendt’s explorations of the a futuristic baroque instrument, Lyra Polyversalis, and percussionist Mascha Juno and vocalist Zola Mennenöh who restore the restless flow into firm ground.
Eyal Hareuveni
Johannes Schleiermacher (tenor saxophone, flute, synthesizer), Max Andrzejewski (drums, synthesizer), Zola Mennenöh (vocals), Helena Weinstock-Montag (flute), Oliver Roth (flute), Gregoire Simon (viola), Andreas Arendt (Lyra Polyversalis), Rieko Okuda (piano), Dan Peter Sundland (electric bass), Mike Majkowski (double bass), Els Vandeweyer (vibrafone), Bo-Sung Kim (Korean percussion), Hyo Jin Shin (Korean percussion), Mascha Juno (percussion)
