Puna is the debut album of a Berlin-based trio of experienced, idiosyncratic free improvisers – German guitarist Olf Rupp and double bass player Meinrad Kneer (who also runs the Evil Rabbit label) with Austrian drummer-percussionist Rudi Fischerlehner, who collaborated and recorded before with Rupp in many formats, including in the duo Zenofox, and with Kneer in the Julia Sassoon Quartet. The album was recorded at Berlinaudio-Studio in January 2021.

Rupp plays the electric guitar and brings to this trio his energetic manner of charging and shaping the improvisations with an organic flow of loud and raw clusters of sounds while using spectral fields of tones. Kneer adapts immediately to these stormy sound waves but also opens them with his own, different kind of possessed and powerful playing, arco and pizzicato, with his own manic sense of rhythmic flow and enigmatic overtones, while Fischerlehner solidifies the tight and uncompromising dynamics of the trio with completely free drumming.

There is no explanation of why the trio chose to call this album Puna (and there are many locations around the globe titled Puna). But the four pieces show how the extensive experience and sharp and pure instincts of Rupp, Kneer and Fischerlehner led to super raw, yet refined and often surprising improvisations and new universes of sounds.

Eyal Hareuveni

Olf Rupp (electric guitar), Meinrad Kneer (double bass), Rudi Fischerlehner (drums, percussion)