Andere Planeten is the third album of the German, Berlin-based, unorthodox, electro-acoustic Das Kondesant, led by sax player-composer Gebhard Ullmann who celebrates this year his 65th birthday. The original trio of Ullmann with bassist Oliver Potratz and drummer-synth player Eric Schaefer is now augmented with guest American, Berlin-based keyboardist Liz Kosack.
True to its title and to Ullmann’s compositional strategies, this quartet juggles with exploratory sounds and cerebral ideas but does so with engaging melodies, touching ballads and rhythmic pouches and healthy doses of sensual fun, while letting all elements merge into the other and condensate into new, highly-inventive sonic substance. The boundary-free Das Kondesant spent eight years simply developing a fusion of analog-digital vocabulary before entering the studio for their 2017 self-titled debut (released by WhyPlayJazz). The new album was recorded in June 2020 and June 2022 at Low Swing Tonstudios in Berlin.
Andere Planeten (Other Planets) not only indicates the alien soundworld of the newly expanded quartet but references the seismic impact of Arnold Schönberg’s string quartet no. 2 (with its last movement begins with the line from a poem of German poet Stefan George, «Entrückung: «Ich fühle Luft von anderem Planeten» («I feel air from another planet»). The pieces «Andere Planeten 1 & 2» correspond with Schönberg’s seminal composition and his wish to find new sounds and a new approach to the expression of moods.
The album offers 13 «improvised compositions» or instant compositions that highlight the always curious voices of the quartet, and its way of navigating freely between vintage Krautrock and space-rock sounds, ambient, dub, free jazz and contemporary microtonal music and futurist, digital sampling and processed sounds. The music of the quartet is also jazz, but only among other things. Kosack proved to be a perfect addition with her irreverent and untypical jazz playing, and with her, Das Kondensat enjoys breaking all familiar rules and conventions. Or as Ullmann puts it: «Curiosity is the lust for new things. That is what all this is about».
Eyal Hareuveni
Gebhard Ullmann (ss, ts, looper, elec), Liz Kosack (keys), Oliver Potratz (el.b, elec), Eric Schaefer (dr, modular synth)
